


Transcendent: Divergent Rewritten

by f0rt1ss1m0



Series: Divergent, but for gays [1]
Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent - All Media Types, Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe – Tori Does Not Tell Tris What Divergent Is Because That Just Makes More Sense, Alternate Universe – Tris Is Biracial, Alternate Universe – Tris Is Queer, Because of Reasons, Canon Rewrite, Class Issues, Crime, Criticisms of False Meritocracy in American Capitalism, F/F, Genderbent Four, LGBTQ Themes, Legal Drama, Mystery, Religious Conflict, Rule 63, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 46
Words: 142,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18854635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0rt1ss1m0/pseuds/f0rt1ss1m0
Summary: "I bit my cheek harder and dragged the blade down. I didn't feel. I didn't care. Then, with a gasp I couldn't contain, I stepped forward and opened my fist, and my blood trickled into the glass tiles."Beatrice Prior's aptitude test came back inconclusive. Instead of revealing that she is Divergent, her Candor test proctor deleted the results and lied, telling Beatrice that she is only Abnegation. But Beatrice knows something is not right. Amidst the stress of faction initiation, the rising civil conflicts in Erudite and the factionless projects, and the cold case mystery of the missing Abigail Eaton, Beatrice must discover for herself who — or what — she really is.A rewrite of Divergent to whatever I like — namely, deeper explorations of Candor, symbolic criticisms of systematic inequality, and Tris being the sassy bisexual she was always meant to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to Transcendent! This project is a huge, self-indulgent mess and I am excited to share it. 
> 
> First of all, I want to make the legal disclaimer that I Do Not Own Anything Here. Divergent and its associated publications are the property of Veronica Roth. I am not making any money off of this work. 
> 
> But second of all, I want to make the creative claimer that this is NOT simply a reposting of the first Divergent book. The plot diverges (ha, ha) in chapter 2. The first chapter is very similar as a deliberate choice, encouraging me to work within the parameters of canon rather than rebuilding the world myself. I have, however, taken it upon myself to write solely in the past tense, because who's going to stop me?
> 
> Third of all, PLEASE ENJOY! This fic is my attempt at making Divergent ultra gay and ultra emotional. Not that it can't be both of those things already — but it totally could've been more. This is me trying it out. 
> 
> Thank you all so much!

 

There was one mirror in my house. It was behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allowed us to open the panel on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cut my hair.

I sat on the stool and my mother stood behind me with the scissors, trimming. The curls fell on the floor in a dull red ring.

When she finished, she pulled my hair away from my face and gathered it into a small bun. Then, when the bun was in place, she took a cotton undercap and a long grey scarf from a hook on the wall and began to wrap them carefully around my head. Her fingers moved deliberately; her face was calm and focused. She was well-practiced in the art of losing herself.

I snuck a look at my reflection when she wasn't paying attention, honestly, not for vanity — or so I told myself — just curiosity. A lot could happen to someone in three months. In the silver, I saw a dark face, round brown eyes, and a flat wide nose, features that didn't seem to fit with the freckles or red hair now hidden under the scarf. I still looked like that strange little girl, though sometime in the past few months I turned sixteen. The other factions celebrated birthdays, but we didn't. It would have been self-indulgent.

"There," my mother said when she pinned the scarf in place. Her eyes caught mine in the mirror. It was too late to look away, but then she just smiled at our reflection. I didn't understand why she hadn't scolded me for staring at myself, though now, I couldn't take my eyes off her. There was a sadness somewhere.

"So today is the day," she said.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Are you nervous?"

I met my own eyes again. Today was the day of the aptitude test that would show me which of the five factions I belonged in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, I would decide on a faction; I would decide the rest of my life; I would decide to stay with my family or abandon them.

I echoed what I'd been told. "The tests don't have to change our choices."

"Right." She smiled. "Let's go eat breakfast."

"Thank you. For cutting my hair."

She kissed my cheek and slid the panel over the mirror. "I love you, sunshine," she whispered. My mother could be beautiful, in a different world. Her body was thin beneath the grey dress and apron. She had the darkest skin of any woman I'd ever seen, and when she freed her hair of its bun at night, it framed her face like a cloud. But she had to hide that beauty in Abnegation.

We walked together to the kitchen. On those mornings when my brother made breakfast, and my father's hand skimmed a fold of my scarf as he read his newspaper, and my mother hummed as she cleared the table — it was on those mornings that my stomach clenched tightest for wanting to leave them.

-

The bus reeked of exhaust. The roads were peppered with holes that could swallow a smaller vehicle, but I could never predict when we would hit one, so I was challenged to maintain a death grip on the seat for the whole ride. Five years previously, volunteers from Abnegation led a force of workers to repave some of the roads, starting in the middle of the city and working their way outward until they ran out of materials. This bus line never really cared which roads were the good ones.

My brother, Caleb, stood in the bus aisle. The gray robe fell from his arm as he clutched a railing above his head. We were twins, but we never looked alike. I was the older by four minutes, but he seemed to age two years ahead. He had my father's fairer skin and straight nose with my mother's dark eyes and curly hair. When he was younger, that collection of features looked strange, but now he could pull it off. If he wasn't Abnegation, the girls at school would've been all over him.

He was the spitting image of both of my parents' selflessness. Without a second thought, he had offered his seat to an arrogant young Candor man.

The Candor man wore a black suit with a white silk tie — Candor standard uniform. Their faction valued truth, seeing justice as an illuminating light in the dark, so that was what they wore. What I had always found odd about them is how they could believe in justice and act so rudely. As he flicked through a sheaf of papers, the man spread his legs so wide that I had to lean far against the window, pulling my cotton skirt with me.

I glimpsed Caleb behind the Candor man's white hat. His eyes shifted constantly, watching the people around us — striving to see only them and to forget himself. Candor valued truth, but our faction, Abnegation, valued selflessness.

The gaps between the buildings narrowed and the roads grew smoother as we neared the heart of the city. The building that we called the Hub — long ago called the Sears, or the Willis, or something like that — emerged from the fog, a flawless black pillar in the jagged skyline. The bus passed under the elevated tracks. I had never been on a train, though they never stopped running and there were tracks everywhere. Only the Dauntless rode them.

When the bus stopped in front of the school, I stood. I stumbled over the Candor man's shoes as I left and grabbed Caleb's arm. My skirt was too long and I'd never been that graceful.

The Upper Levels building was the oldest of the three schools in the city: Lower Levels, Mid-Levels, and Upper Levels. Like all the other buildings around it, it was made of glass and steel. In the front was a large metal sculpture that the Dauntless climbed after school, daring each other to go higher and higher. There would be no climbing today, however, as the sculpture was draped in giant, multicolored banners. They read _APTITUDE TESTS TODAY_ in giant bubble letters.

"There's aptitude tests today," I told Caleb, hoping to crack the cold silence between us.

Normally, he liked it when I tried to joke with him, or at least, I assumed so. But he just nodded stiffly as we passed through the front doors. It did not take long to understand why. The atmosphere was electric, hungry, like every sixteen-year-old was trying to devour as much as they could get of their last day. We would not walk these halls again after the Choosing Ceremony — once we chose, our new factions would be responsible for finishing our education. My throat tightened as I swallowed.

Caleb and I stopped at our lockers, next to each other. But there was nothing to put in or take out; we had returned all of our books yesterday because we would have no classes today. When I saw the bare, dented floor of my locker, any last sliver of humor was doused like a candle in a bucket of water.

"Hey, Caleb?" I asked.

He was looking down, rifling through the last school item he managed to keep, a notebook. "What?"

"You aren't worried, are you? About what you'll get?"

He frowned. When he didn't respond for a moment, I said, "Because if _you're_ nervous, I have a lot more to be worried about."

Caleb raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"

I had tried to read Caleb for years and I never could. I really could only hope it worked the other way, too. I could have told him I could never guess what the aptitude test would tell me — Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity, or Dauntless?

Instead I just grinned and said, "I'll be fine. And so will you."

He gave a pressed smile back. "Thanks, Beatrice."

We parted ways, him to find his friends, and me to find mine. I wondered if this would be the last time I spoke to him before our lives were changed forever. I did not think I would ever know his answer to my question.

The hallways were cramped as usual; the dusty light through the windows created only a weak illusion of space. Underneath, kids in blue, red, grey, black, and white churned through the corridor. This was the last place where the factions mixed, at our age. Today the whirlpool had a new energy, a last day mania.

An Amity girl shouted "Hey!" next to my ear, waving at a distant friend. Her transparent yellow shawl fluttered across my face. But before I could brush it away and continue walking, something _tugged_ against my head. Something else struck me between the shoulderblades. I stumbled and crashed to the ground, my headscarf unraveling around me.

The person who pulled my scarf was an Erudite boy in a blue sweater. "Out of my way, Stiff," he snapped as he stormed down the hallway.

My cheeks burned. I fumbled with the folds of my scarf, making sure it was still hiding my fiery hair. A few people stopped when I fell, but none offered to help me, and my hand was almost crushed by walking feet as I reached for a fallen pin. When I got up, their eyes followed me to the edge of the hallway. This sort of thing had been happening to the others in my faction for months — Erudite writers had been releasing all sorts of propaganda in the newspapers about Abnegation, and it hadn't made school any easier. The grey clothes, the scarf for my hair, and the reserved demeanor required by my faction were supposed to make it easier for me to forget myself, and easier for everyone else to forget me too. But now they made me a target.

When I reached the foyer, I sat in a corner window and waited for the the Dauntless to arrive. I did this every morning. At exactly 7:25, the Dauntless proved their bravery by jumping from a moving train.

My father called the Dauntless "hellions". They were pierced, tattooed, and black-clothed. They said their purpose was to keep order among the people, but everyone knew their only real job was to guard the fence that surrounded our city. From what, I didn't know.

They really did perplex me. I couldn't help but wonder what courage — the virtue they valued most — had to do with a metal ring through your nostril. But still, my eyes clung to them wherever they went.

The train whistle blared and the window vibrated against my forehead. The light fixed to the front of the train flickered on and off as the train hurtled past the school, squealing on iron rails. And as the last few cars passed, a flock of young men and women in dark plumage hurled themselves from the open cars, some dropping and rolling, others stumbling a few steps before regaining their balance.

My eyes caught on a tall, muscular young woman with scruffy hair. I never saw her in the school halls, and she seemed almost too old to be a student. But every morning, I saw her jump from the train. She had a strange, crescent-shaped scar that covered the left side of her face. I couldn't help but think that she would be an interesting person to talk to.

But I was never sure what I would say. I turned away from the window and pressed through the crowd to the lunchroom, where I would await the beginning of a new life.


	2. Chapter 2

The tests began as soon as the first bell rang. Every person in our grade was filed into the cafeteria, and the test administrators called ten names at a time, one for each testing room. Until then, we waited in our factions.

Unlike the halls, the circular cafeteria was segregated five ways — a pie slice for Abnegation, and a pie slice for Candor, and Erudite, and Dauntless, and Amity. The only reason the cafeteria wasn’t five separate rooms entirely was because the school administration believed it was healthy for young students to mingle with different factions. I think they thought that one day we would all walk in and start holding hands and making crazy self-discoveries that some of us would be better off changing factions on our Choosing Day. But children liked to stay in their own pie slices just like adults did, which was why we needed to take the aptitude tests, so that those of us who were afraid of the unknown would know if we were actually born to travel it.

I sat with a few other sixteen-year-old girls in the Abnegation pie slice. I called them friends, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that was too generous. They were the same girls every day. They always dressed in the same grey dresses and aprons. I saw them at the same service retreats every weekend. Somehow, their names always escaped me, in part because they did not speak to me.

The only one I really knew was Susan, my next door neighbor. Her father traveled the city for his job, so he had a car and drove her to and from school every day. He always offered to drive us, too, but as Caleb said, we preferred to leave later and would not want to inconvenience him.

Of course not.

The test proctors were mostly Abnegation volunteers, although there were two Candor volunteers to test those of us from Abnegation, because the rules stated that we couldn’t be tested by someone from our own faction. The rules also said that we couldn’t prepare for the test in any way, so I had no clue what to expect.

My gaze drifted from Susan to the black pie slice, the Dauntless tables across the room. They were laughing and shouting and playing cards; a tiny girl was arm wrestling a hulking brute of a boy. She was winning. At the blue pie slice, the Erudite chattered over stacks of books and papers, unable to escape from the extracurricular tests and exams that their faction administered on top of standard schooling. One deviant group was playing a game involving a marker board, little figurines, and dice in a dozen different shapes.

A group of Amity kids in yellow and red sat around a boy playing a guitar, singing together. Every few minutes, the song shifted, flowing effortlessly between bawdy rhymes to solemn sighs to soaring anthems, and only stopping for occasional choruses of laughter when a harmony didn’t work. In the pie slice next to them, a silent Candor boy made rapid, intricate gestures with his hands, I supposed some form of sign language, while a few girls signed back and spoke at the same time. They appeared to be arguing about something, despite the hearing barrier, but it must not have been serious because they and their audience were all smiling.

At the Abnegation tables, we sat quietly and waited. For hours. Faction customs dictated even idle behavior and superseded individual preference. I doubted all the Erudite wanted to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoyed a lively debate, but if they wanted to succeed in their factions they couldn’t defy the norms any more than I.

Still, I couldn’t help but bounce my leg under my skirt. Once, I faked a bathroom emergency just so I could slip away from the dreadful silence.

A little before noon, Caleb’s name was called. He moved confidently toward the exit with the next group. I didn’t know why I had been worried for him. He knew where he belonged, and as far as I knew, he always had. My earliest memory of him was from when we were four years old. He had scolded me for not giving my jump rope to a little girl on the playground who didn’t have anything to play with. He didn’t lecture me as often anymore, but I had his look of disapproval memorized.

I had tried to explain that I was not like him — it didn’t even cross my mind to give my seat to the Candor man on the bus — but he never got it. “Just do what you’re supposed to,” he always said. It was that easy for him. Just doing what he was supposed to.

My stomach curled up, like a fist around glass. I closed my eyes and kept them closed until, thirty minutes later, I heard a door open. Caleb’s group returned and I picked him out of the group at once.

He was plaster-pale. He pushed his palms along his legs like I did when I wiped off sweat, and as he put them into his pockets, his fingers shook too much to do it right. I almost got up, but Susan shot me a look. I was not allowed to ask Caleb about his results and he was not allowed to tell me.

An Abnegation volunteer spoke the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: “From Abnegation: Susan Black and Beatrice Prior.”

Now I got up. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have moved for the rest of time. There was a bubble in my chest that expanded more by the second, pushing against my chest, shortening my breath, but I couldn’t show it because nobody else was. So I just followed Susan. One girl in grey after another.

Waiting for us outside the cafeteria was a row of ten rooms. They were locked every day except today, used only for the aptitude tests, so when I stepped into the corridor I almost startled. The walls and doors to each room were all finely-polished mirrors. I watched myself, a dark little girl in a grey hood, ghosting towards one of the doors. Susan grinned nervously at me as she walked into room 9, and after a disorganized little prayer, I pushed the mirror open into room 10. A Candor woman waited for me.

Even though she didn’t move, she took me by surprise. She had dark brown skin and straightened black hair to her shoulders, but I couldn’t see her eyes; they were hidden behind round black glasses. And unlike most of the Candor I had seen, her suit, shirt, shoes, and tie were all snow white. She held a silver cane in one hand — she was blind. I knew about the deaf Candor boy, but if my heart wasn’t beating in my throat, I might have thought to ask if Candor had a particular philosophy about people with disabilities. It was rare to see one in Abnegation and I had never wondered why.

Like the hall, mirrors covered the inner walls of the room. I could see my reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of the bun on my head, my too-long sleeves, my spindly freckled hands and ashen palms. Everything was bathed in cold grey light. In the center of the room was a reclined chair, like a dentist’s. A silver machine stood sentry to the right of it, with coiled wires hanging up on hooks around it.

“Beatrice Prior?” said the woman.

“Yes,” I replied. My voice barely came out as a whisper.

“As of today, are you sixteen years old?”

“Yes.”

“Have you taken your required literacy and mathematics tests?”

“Yes.” I could not say I did well, but I had taken them.

“Are your parents Andrew and Natalie Prior of Abnegation?”

“Yes.”

“Have a seat, please,” she said. “Call me Irene.”

Clumsily I sat in the chair and reclined, lowering my head to the headrest. The grey lights beckoned out a headache I didn’t know I had. Irene set down her cane, slipped a black headset over her ears, and busied herself with the screens on the machine. I tried to focus on her and not on the threatening wires — hard at first, but there was something truly fascinating in how fast she could manipulate the screens without seeing them. She had the keyboard memorized.

When she attached the first electrode to my forehead, I blurted, “Why the white suit?”

Over the glasses, Irene raised her eyebrows. “A curious Abnegation, hmm?”

My curiosity had always been a bad habit, a betrayal of Abnegation values. My cheeks flushed with heat. But then Irene said, “That’s what we like to see, Miss Prior.”

She returned to typing on the machine’s keyboard. My mouth formed the beginning of a question, but I stopped myself, and then I thought about that again, but by then I was too awkward to say it at all.

“The only thing I am allowed to say about the test,” said Irene, “is that you will know what to do. You may be worried that you will be going into it with bias. But I assure you, this is unlike any other test you may have taken. You will know what to do.”

“What if I do something wrong?” I asked.

“You can’t,” she replied. “Just trust me.”

Right. That’s what I was told. The test was special. I would react with what my gut told me. My gut told me that I didn’t want to do this.

Irene pressed the second electrode to my forehead. “Did you still want to know about the white suit?”

The question was neutral, but I almost wanted to avoid it. At the same time, though, I realized Irene likely got that question a lot, and I would never see her again after today, so why not.

“Yes,” I said.

She circled around behind the chair. “My very first day as a Candor law student,” she said, “I wore one black sock and one white sock to class. I managed to clash in a dress code that only allows two colors.”

I was suddenly struck by how committed to honesty these people must be. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes.” I saw Irene nod in the mirror, then turn away. She tugged wires toward her, attaching them to my hands, to her hands, to the machine behind her. Then she passed me a cold vial that held a clear liquid. “Drink this.”

“What is it?” My throat felt too swollen to drink anything. “What’s going to happen?”

“Just trust me, Miss Prior.”

I didn’t have a choice. I pressed air from my lungs and tipped the contents of the vial into my mouth.

-

When I next opened my eyes, I was standing on a shore.

There were small round stones beneath my bare feet, and icy white water lapped at my toes. The air around me was dark and grey and blustery, and through the red curls whipping around my face, I could see thunderheads on the stretched horizon, melding with the grey sea. Behind me was a field of more stones and then water again. I was on an island, on a beach. I had never been to a beach. I wasn’t sure how I knew the word.

I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t sure how I knew anything. For a long, deep moment, I couldn’t recall who I was, where I had come from, or why I was here.

There was a lethargic fuzz, a vague little voice in my head that made me think, _That’s not important._ But I couldn’t stop wondering if it was. _That’s not important._ I looked down. I was wearing nothing but a short brown dress and I was shivering. _That’s not important._ I lifted my hands, stained with a million dark brown freckles. _That’s not important._ I pushed my red hair out of my eyes. _That’s not important._

My name was Beatrice Prior and this was my aptitude test.

The voice disappeared.

I looked out to the sea again. Floating in the water were two objects, a beautiful yellow lily and a black knife. The wave pushed in and left them at my feet.

 _Choose,_ said the voice in my head.

“Why?” I asked.

 _Choose,_ it insisted.

I didn’t want to. The knife was useful but the scent of the flower filled me with peace. I knew that this was the test. I knew that I had to follow my gut to choose one or the other. But my gut didn’t want to choose one. So I knelt and reached for both.

 _Have it your way,_ said the voice.

Before I could touch either, the waves rushed around my ankles, lifting the knife and the flower and pulling them away. They floated further apart from each other, further away from me, and instinct drove me to run after one or the other, but I couldn’t get to both in time. So I just stood and watched them leave until a larger wave crumbled over, drowning both.

And then I blinked and suddenly I was in a large dark room, filled with men in suits, all of them arguing with one another. I tried to look at their faces but I couldn’t catch them somehow; they were all so much taller and I was just so small. In the center of the room was a bare white pedestal.

I couldn’t quite tell what the men were arguing about. Initially, I tried to speak up, but nobody listened. There were just too many voices. But I knew instantly what I was meant to do. If I had chosen the flower, I could have walked forward and placed it upon the pedestal. What that would have done, I had no idea.

But now I had nothing to offer except me.

I ghosted through the crowds. Nobody moved out of my way. I approached the pedestal. Nobody noticed. I placed my hand down. Nobody turned.

I opened my mouth and began to sing. I chose the first thing that came to mind. An old hymn my mother used to sing to me as a lullaby, before I even knew how to sing along.

 _When peace like a river attendeth my way,_ _  
_ _When sorrows like sea billows roll_ _  
_ _Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say_   
It is well, it is well, with my soul

 _It is well_ _  
_ _With my soul_   
It is well, it is well with my soul

I wasn’t a strong singer. I couldn’t get very loud. But the room had fallen silent. By the time I finished, all of the featureless eyes were on me, and the room was brightening slowly, the yellow lights turning on one by one.

And then the floor dropped out from under me.

I tumbled onto hard rock and rolled to a stop on my stomach, groaning. When I pushed myself up to my feet, I was in a clearing in a dark forest. I stood upon a stagelike slab of rock, under a thin crescent moon.

Behind me, something scratched against the rock. I turned — and suddenly I was face to face with a huge black dog, crouched a few yards away from me, its lips peeled back from dripping white teeth. A growl gurgled from deep in its throat, and I saw why the knife would have come in handy. But it was too late now.

With no weapon, I thought about running, but the dog would be faster than me. I couldn’t wrestle it to the ground. My head pounded.

The dog snarled and the sound vibrated in my skull.

My biology textbook said that dogs could smell fear because many animals secrete a certain chemical when under stress, rabbits and humans alike. Smelling the chemical triggers the dog to attack. I didn’t think I was secreting anything, but my mouth was dry as paper and the dog was still inching towards me, its nails scraping the stone. This encounter could end only one way.

Unless…

There were no whites in its eyes, just twin black gleams. I looked down. That was something else I knew about dogs. I shouldn’t meet its eye; the dog would see it as a sign of aggression. Still, its giant paws stalked forward. I could smell its hot, foul breath. If eye contact was a sign of aggression, what was a sign of submission?

Keeping my breath slow and steady was like pulling a heavy wagon up a hill, a constant battle to keep it from breaking from my control, but I managed. I sank to my knees. The last thing I wanted to do was lie down on the ground in front of the dog — making its teeth level with my face — but it was my only option. I got on my stomach and stretched my legs behind me and my shaking arms flat at my sides. My forehead rested against the cold stone.

The dog sniffed the top of my head. It barked in my ear, and I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming.

Then the dog’s growling stopped. I tentatively lifted my head. It was sitting back on its haunches, panting, before it lowered itself to its front paws and licked my face.

Relief crashed over me and I couldn’t help but laugh. When I sat up, the dog just gave a playful bark. I let it sniff my hand before rubbing it behind the ears.

“You’re not such a vicious beast after all, huh?”

It was like it had turned into an entirely different animal. Suddenly, its ears perked up and it looked to the horizon, then bounded away in a flash of black fur.

When it vanished, I realized I was sitting in a room with black walls, much like the first one with the arguing men, but smaller, and in this one I was alone. Before me stood a blue door with a circular window and a 10-digit keypad and a timer reading _1:00._ As soon as I stood, the timer began to tick down. _0:59. 0:58._

Panic rose in my throat. I didn’t know what would happen when the timer reached zero, but I wasn’t about to wait and find out. I whirled around, searching for anything that might help me, but there was just the door. I tried to look out the circle window, but saw only white light. When I looked back to the keypad, I saw that it had blank spaces for three numbers. A period sat between the first space and the second space.

A circle. A decimal. I knew what this was. Before the clock reached 45 seconds, I punched in _3.14,_ the first three digits of pi.

The door swung open. Easy enough.

The door led to a hallway, which I walked down, which grew darker and darker until I was stumbling blind. My hands brushed firm, cold metal. As I felt around, I managed to find two vertical handles, which I pulled.

I stepped onto a crowded bus, just like the one I rode every day to school. All the seats were full. Like the room with the men, I looked into every one of the passengers’ faces, but for some reason, could never pinpoint features. Just a vague wash of grey.

What happened next occurred in such a short moment that briefly after, I wondered if it was really me that did it. I made my way down the aisle and tried to reach up to hold onto a bar, but it was too tall. So I found a vertical pole, behind a man holding a grey briefcase. At first, I didn’t pay him much mind. Then I noticed something else. I couldn’t see his face from where I stood, but I saw his hands. They were scarred, like he was burned, and they clenched the briefcase handle like he wanted to break it off.

The bus jolted as it started. The man lost his grip on the briefcase and it cracked open. Out fell a hand-sized silver capsule with a blinking red light.

A bomb. I knew what it was before it could roll any further down the aisle.

“NO!” I screamed. I didn’t think. I threw myself forward, grabbed it, and pulled it under my body.

Even through my squeezed eyelids, I saw a white flash.

For several minutes, I thought I was dead, or maybe the simulation had broken, or both. I just stayed there, floating in space, frozen in time, curled around the hot silver bomb. I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realized that I wasn’t hugging a bomb anymore. I was hugging a crumpled piece of paper. The ground under me was solid again.

Grimacing, I cracked open my eyes and sat up. I had been lying on a stone bench. I was outside on a beautiful spring day, overlooking a plaza. People milled about an elaborate fountain. Everything was strangely dark — I reached up to my face and found I was wearing sunglasses. A sweatshirt hood was pulled over my head.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

I looked up again. Two men in suits stood before me, both of them also wearing sunglasses. Guns were strapped to their hips. One of them was holding a piece of paper.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said. He unfolded the paper. “But have you seen this girl?”

I looked.

The picture was me.

“Why are you looking for her?” I croaked.

The second man raised his brow. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” I asked.

“It’s in all of the papers, ma’am. She killed a man.”

The air was warm, but cold rippled down my spine. My stomach knotting, I unfurled the crumpled newspaper in my hands.

My face, in inky black-and-white, decorated the front page. The headline read _BRUTAL MURDERER ON THE RUN._

I couldn’t take my eyes away from the word “murderer”. It had been a long time since I had last read it, and even its shape filled me with dread. Before I could read further, the page was trembling like a leaf. But it was just my hands.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” asked one of the men. “Does she look familiar?” But I wasn’t listening.

I think it was the first time in the test that even my subconscious forgot that it wasn’t real. I couldn’t remember who I had killed. My stomach churned just considering the thought. But I felt a weight in my pocket and when I reached in, I found a knife, wet with someone’s blood.

What happened to murderers? They were shunned from society. Imprisoned for life. Executed. I felt my feet itch; I wanted to clear my throat and shrug my shoulders and, after the men left, run like hell.

But I had hurt someone. And I had kept the knife. I didn’t know if I would hurt someone again. I needed to be stopped. And there was only one person who could stop me.

I handed back the picture and dropped the newspaper.

“Do you know her?” asked one man.

I pushed back my hood.

“Ma’am?” said the other.

I took off my sunglasses.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re looking for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all who are following this story! I'm going on record and saying that this story won't update every other day. I'm just trying to get all the versions on the same page in terms of posting schedules and that day will be Saturday. Maybe. Or whenever I darn well please, which is more likely. 
> 
> Anyway! Please comment, I'd love to hear what you think is going to happen, or anything that you would like to :D


	3. Chapter 3

I woke with a jolt. I was shaking. Crying. Gasping for breath.

It took me a while to compose myself. But when I did, I found myself lying in the chair in the mirrored room, and I was safe. I hoped I was safe. In the mirror, I saw Irene behind me. Her lips were pinched as she removed the electrodes from our heads and the headset from her ears.

I waited for her to say something about the test — that it was over, or that I did well, because I didn’t know what not being over or not doing well would look like — but she said nothing, just continued to remove the wires hastily. The adhesive pads left my skin stinging and I rubbed them once they were off. My hands were almost dripping with sweat and I wiped them on my skirt next. I was sure I did the test as well as I could. But Irene didn’t strike me as someone who could be ruffled easily, and now she was very ruffled indeed.

“Irene?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“When you were in there,” asked Irene, “did you understand you were taking the test? Did you really remember who you were?”

“Of course I did — ”

“I have something to attend to,” said Irene. “Excuse me.”

“Stop,” I blurted.

She froze. So did I. Interrupting was forbidden in Abnegation. “Pardon?” she asked.

“I — I want to know what I got,” I said hesitantly. There was something Irene was not telling me. I wished she wasn’t wearing those sunglasses, because not being able to see her eyes was making it hard to read her expression. Her brow furrowed just slightly.

“You’re getting _on my nerves,”_ she said plainly, then snatched up her cane and left the room.

I was still trembling, so I brought my knees to my chest and buried my face in them. The tears weren’t offering even the slightest sense of relief. How could you fail a test you weren’t allowed to prepare for?

After a few minutes, I got more nervous. I had to wipe off my hands every few seconds as the sweat collected. What if they told me that I wasn’t cut out for any faction? I would have to live in the housing projects, with the factionless. I couldn’t do that. There was no real future to be found in the projects. It was dangerous; all of the worst kind of people were factionless. And to live factionless was not just to live a life of menial labor; it was to live divorced from society, separate from the most important thing in life: community.

My mother once told me that we couldn’t survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, we had no purpose. No reason to live.

I shook my head. I couldn’t think like this. I needed to stay calm. My eyes caught on the machine next to me, its screens still open and unlocked.

Then the door opened and Irene walked back in. I realized I had been getting out of my chair and snapped back into it. Thankfully, Irene couldn’t see, so she didn’t know.

“I apologize for my absence,” she said calmly. She stood by my feet with her hands clasped around her cane. “There was a technical error with the test, but the matter has been resolved. Your results came back for Abnegation.”

Abnegation. The answer should have filled me with relief. It was the easy way out, sticking with what you know.

But I knew at once that it wasn’t quite right.

“You’re lying,” I said.

Irene’s lip twitched. “I beg your pardon?”

“I — ” I was about to charge forward, try to protest, say that it couldn’t be right, but my tongue snagged on something and I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what I wanted to tell her. I didn’t even know what I wanted to hear.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I apologize for my disrespect.”

I felt like she could tell that I was lying now, too. But if she did, she didn’t say anything about it, just nodded.

“Your body reacted to the simulation serum, so you’ll be upset for a little while,” said Irene. “I suggest you go home.”

“I have to tell my brother where I’m going.”

“I’ll let him know.”

She gestured for me to stand. I peeled my hands from the arms of the chair but braced myself against them again, my head spinning. Perhaps I really did have a negative reaction. When Irene led me out of the room, she took me away from the lunchroom, towards an elevator that would whisk me straight to the ground floor. I was glad for that, at least. I didn’t really want to be around for the whispers that might happen if I just walked through the lunchroom and left that way.

But my luck only went so far. “Irene?” said a voice, and we both turned. It was the other Candor test proctor, a thin man with a pointy face. “What’s going on?”

“This one had a negative reaction to the serum,” said Irene coolly. “I’m sending her home early.”

“Well, you did complete the test, right?”

“Yes, yes, I did. I’ve been doing this longer than you have, Ben, you just worry about your own kids.”

Ben didn’t seem quite satisfied with that, but he looked at me and clearly saw that I looked like I was about to throw up, so he shrugged. The elevator arrived with a crisp _ding_ and Irene herded me on. “Be safe, Miss Prior,” was all she said before turning away.

I pressed the button for the ground floor. We were on floor six. But just as the doors began to close and as I was drifting away, about to be lost in my own thoughts, something caught my ear again. Ben turned to Irene and asked, “Hey, um...it’s our lunch break now, so do you want to — go together?”

_Lunch break._

Without thinking, I reached over and pressed the button for floor five.

When the doors next opened, they popped me out into a deserted hallway. Classes were still in session and the only witness around was an old janitor. He didn’t even notice the grey-clad Abnegation girl who scurried past him to the corner stairwell.

I couldn’t get on the elevators again; they had cameras and I couldn’t take that risk. One of the stairwells to the sixth floor was locked and now I knew why, because it led to the aptitude testing rooms. So I glanced around, made sure nobody was watching (the janitor had left), pulled two pins from my headscarf, and began to fiddle with the lock.

When I was younger, my parents used to lock the bag of brown sugar in a cabinet to keep us from eating it. More accurately, to keep me from eating it, as they were never able to discipline me away from sneaking sugar. They thought they had won. But I really just let them believe that. The locked cabinet didn’t deter me; it just made me smarter. Sometimes there were delicious benefits to being a terrible person, I guess.

I got the stairwell lock open in a couple minutes and slipped inside. But as soon as the door clicked shut behind me, I felt as if I had just stepped through a shower of ice water. The reality of what I was doing dripped down my spine, down my palms. This was very illegal. Everything I had done, was doing, and was planning to do. Lying to a test proctor. Breaking into the aptitude testing wing. Hacking into a confidential test machine. Was I really going to do this?

“I don’t really have a choice,” I whispered.

Irene had lied to me. If what I was doing was illegal, then what she did was illegal too. If I didn’t find out the truth, I felt like I would go insane.

I began to climb.

When I opened the door at the top of the stairs, I peered around and found that the mirrored halls were empty. Silent. The lights were all off except the faint red blush from the exit signs.

I found the tenth room, thankfully unlocked. The lights were off here too, but along with the red of the exit sign was the blue glow from the testing machine. When I lifted my hands to the keyboard, my fingers were shaking so bad I didn’t think I would press the letters right.

 _Think,_ I scolded myself. _Try to remember what Irene did._

Well...first, Irene had put on that strange headset. But when I found it and put it on, I found that it was simply a voiceover that told me what I was pressing when tried to navigate the limited login page. It explained how Irene could navigate the screens while blind. But it wasn’t helpful to me, so I put it away.

The first thing that Irene had typed was a passcode. She had the keyboard memorized, so she must have been touch-typing. The keyboard had small ridges on the F and J buttons to indicate where to put the index fingers. She had lowered her left pinky and held down — shift, then lifted her right pinky, _P_ . Left index finger moved up, _r._ Right ring finger moved up — _o._ Left index down _c._ Left index up _t. O_ again. _R_ again. And then she moved her hand to the square numerical keyboard to type 1 and 0. _Proctor10._ Not very original. But when it worked and began to load, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud.

On the desktop were several folders. Some names I knew. A few I didn’t. A _Caleb Prior,_ next to _Beatrice Prior._

My breath hitched. My finger hovered over Caleb’s file before I shook my head. No. If he wanted to tell me, he would tell me. I moved to my file and opened it.

“I was afraid I would find you here.”

I whirled around. Irene stood in the doorway, sipping from a thermos. The blue glow of the screen reflected off her round glasses, two bug-like blue eyes. I had never more wanted to die on the spot than I did right then.

“I — I’m sorry — ” I began, but she turned around, closed the door, and held up her hand.

“No, you’re not.”

She was right. I wasn’t. But I did regret being there.

“Well?” Irene tapped her foot. “Have you read the file?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you want to?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Read it,” she said.

I inhaled. Then I turned and looked at the file.

The screen was blank.

“There’s nothing here,” I said.

“Like I said,” Irene told me, “you responded abnormally to the serum. I had to analyze your results manually, and your responses lined up with the standard responses of Abnegation.”

“That’s not right,” I retorted. “You’re lying.”

Irene cocked her chin. “Am I?”

I fell silent. My brain screamed but it seemed like my mouth had been running without it until now. What was I doing? Accusing a Candor of lying? Was I crazy? I felt crazy. I wanted to cry. But I could only stare at the passive opaque glasses.

“You have two choices, Miss Prior,” said Irene. “You can file a complaint that you believe your test results were incorrect — and I can tell them that you broke into a testing room and tampered with a testing machine, which is a felony, by the way. You will be in prison for years and factionless for life. Or...you can go home today, choose whatever faction fits your fancy tomorrow, and _never_ speak of what you saw in that simulation for the rest of your life, ever, with anyone, no matter what happens.”

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't just two choices. It couldn’t be. But I had the feeling she wouldn’t tell me the truth no matter what I begged, cried, bargained, or threatened. A Candor who liked to lie would have all the experience in the world in keeping a secret.

“What’s wrong with what I saw?” I croaked.

Irene regarded me for a while. Then she finally said, “Enough that it would get both of us killed.”

Not could. Or might. Would. I felt as if the cold ice shower had been turned on again.

Irene stepped forward and reached for my hands. Numb, I gave them to her.

“For your safety,” she whispered, “you will never speak of what happened in this room. You came in, you got Abnegation, you felt a little nauseous, I sent you home.”

“What do I do tomorrow?”

“Doesn’t matter. Choose like you would have before you walked in here. If you’re smart, you’ll stay in Abnegation where nobody will ever ask what happened today.”

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t — how could a simulation be dangerous? Why wouldn’t it matter what I chose tomorrow? — but I found myself nodding. She was right, at least, I hoped she was. It was my choice, no matter what the test said.

Amity. Dauntless. Erudite. Abnegation. Candor.

A blank screen.

-

I decided not to take the bus. If I got home early, my father would notice when he checked the house log at the end of the day, and I would have to explain what happened. I wasn’t sure if I was quite ready to do that.

I walked in the middle of the road. The buses tended to hug the curb, so it was safer there. Sometimes, on the streets near my house, I could see places where the yellow lines used to be. We had no use for them, since so few people used cars. We didn’t need stoplights, either, but no one ever took them down and they still dangled precariously over the road. I always quickened my pace as I walked under one, worried that it might crash down any minute.

Renovation moved slowly through the city, which was a patchwork of new, clean buildings and old, crumbling ones. Most of the new buildings sat beside the marsh, which used to be a lake a long time ago. The Abnegation volunteer agency my mother worked for was responsible for most of those renovations.

When I looked at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I thought it was beautiful. When I watched my family move in harmony; when we went to dinner parties and everyone cleaned together afterward without having to be asked; when I saw Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fell in love with this life all over again. It was only when I tried to live it myself that I had trouble. It wasn’t fulfilling. Just performative.

But choosing a different faction meant forsaking my family. Permanently.

Just past the Abnegation neighborhood were the housing projects. Miles upon miles of broken sidewalks. Rows of crumbling storefronts wearing weatherworn hats, hats of quilt-patch brick, boarded windows, and laundry that would never be clean. There were places where the road had completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and flooded subways that I had to be careful to avoid, and places that reeked so powerfully of sewage and trash that I pulled a fold of my scarf over my nose.

This was where the majority lived — the factionless. Three fourths of the city’s population was factionless. I was always told that the factionless had the same chances that we did; they went to government-funded schools, they were taught about the factions, they were offered a place in society. But they refused to choose a faction or failed to complete initiation, and because of their choice they lived in hardship. Any children born factionless were offered a chance at faction life in the Erudite-run “project schools”. But I already knew that no matter what faction I chose, I would never meet a factionless-born initiate. The factionless made their choices just like we made ours, and they often chose not to join us.

So if they chose to work, they became janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they made fabric and operated trains and drove buses. In return, we in the factions supported them. Amity produced free food. Dauntless provided police protection. Erudite offered public education. Candor maintained a fair justice system. Abnegation worked among the factionless to govern and distribute all of the resources. But, as my mother said sadly, there was never enough to go around. And, as my father always added, not all of the factionless chose to accept it.

Even still, we were taught to never fear walking among them. They needed compassion just like anyone else.

Some of the hollow faces stared out of me. Others disappeared into the yawning black doorways, as if shying away. One, a teenager wearing ragged brown clothing, sat at the edge of a sinkhole with his bare feet hanging over. A factionless kid. He watched with sunken eyes as I approached.

“Hey,” he called. “Hey, Stiff, whatcha got? Ain’t eaten today.”

There had been a lump in my throat before, but now it was worse. A stern voice in my head said, _Duck your head and keep walking._

But that wasn’t right. He needed help and it was my duty to give it.

“I...I have a lunch,” I said. My mother had packed a brown paper bag for me that I hadn’t had the stomach to open. I reached into my pack and pulled it out.

The kid reached towards me, but he didn’t take the bag. His hand clamped around my wrist. He smiled. Some of his teeth were missing, but he couldn’t have been much older than I.

“Whatcha hiding with that hood, missy?” he slurred. “Show me a peek?”

I jerked my hand back, but he was unnaturally strong, his eyes bloodshot — he had to be under the influence of one of the homemade drugs that spread like wildfire through the factionless populations. Something acrid and unpleasant stung in his breath.

“Little young to be walking around by yourself,” he said.

“I’m older than _you,_ ” I retorted. “I’m sixteen.”

His lips spread wide, revealing a gray molar with a dark pit in the side. “Oh yeah, it’s that big special day for you, i’nit? The day before you _choose?”_

“Let go of me,” I hissed. My ears began to ring. My voice echoed clear and stern — not what I expected to hear. Like it didn’t belong to me.

I was ready. I knew what to do. I pictured myself twisting my free arm around and driving my elbow into his jaw. I saw the brown paper bag flying into the sinkhole. I heard my running footsteps. I wanted to act.

But then he released my wrist, took the bag, and said, “Choose right, Stiff.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter in particular might seem close to the source material at the beginning, but rest assured, there are some very important pieces of setup here. :)
> 
> Reviews are food!!

I reached my street five minutes before I usually did, according to my watch — the only adornment Abnegation allowed, and only because it was practical. It had a grey band and a glass face. If I tilted it right, I could almost see my reflection over the hands.

The houses on my street were all the same size and shape. They were made of grey cement, with few windows, in economical, no-nonsense rectangles. Their lawns were crabgrass and their mailboxes were dull metal. To some the sight might have been gloomy, but to me, their simplicity provided a kind of peace.

The reason for the simplicity wasn’t necessarily disdain for personal expression, as the other factions often interpreted it. Everything — our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles — was meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, other forms of selfishness. If we had little, and wanted for little, and were all equal, we would envy no one.

Sometimes I was content with it.

I waited on the front step until I saw Caleb appear at the end of the street. When he saw me, he quickened his pace, and I stood up.

“Beatrice!” he said. “What happened? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I told him, then led him into the house and closed the door behind us. “When the test was over, I got sick. Probably just the liquid they gave us, that’s what my proctor said.”

Caleb didn’t seem convinced. His dark, straight eyebrows drew together so that a crease appeared between them.

“Are you ever going to tell me the truth?” he asked softly.

“The truth is,” I replied, “I’m not supposed to discuss it. And you’re not supposed to ask.”

“All those rules you bend, and you can’t bend this one? Not even for something this important?” His eyebrows tugged together. He was probing for information, I knew, like he actually wanted my answer. The problem was that I didn’t have an answer for him. 

So I did what I did best — deflect. “So what happened in your test?”

Our eyes locked. His eyes were such a light brown they were almost gold. I tried to imagine what he was seeing. My eyes, such a dark brown they were black.

“Just...don’t say anything to Mom and Dad, okay?” I said.

His eyes lingered on mine for a few seconds more, and then he nodded. Different though we may be, there had always been that much mutual understanding — there were just some things that should stay between siblings.

It was the last day of school, so there was no homework, and the last day of the week, so it was time for Caleb and I to clean our room. His side was neat as always and he took to his desk, writing something or other in his notebook, while I sat on my bed and stared at the clutter. Neither of us had many personal effects, but I still found it difficult to keep things neat. Sometimes I would drop a sock or something, forget to pick it up, and then it would sit there for the rest of the week. Other times, I would put something somewhere unusual and then just be... _ unable  _ to put it in the correct spot. I could never explain it, and a year or so ago, my parents had given up trying to teach me not to do that.

Which led me to Fridays, when I would sit and stare at the disorder until I grew sick of it and cleaned as I was supposed to. 

After cleaning, I wanted to just lie on my partially-made bed, maybe take some time to think. But my father had made dinner last night, my brother made breakfast that morning, and my mother had prepared our lunches, so it was my turn to cook. And it wasn’t like I had much left to turn over in my head anyway. 

A minute after I began in the kitchen, Caleb joined me. His natural goodness, his inborn selflessness was both admirable and infuriating, but I couldn’t say no to free help. We worked together without speaking. I cooked three cans of peas. He defrosted four pieces of chicken. Most of what we ate was frozen or canned, because farms now were far away. My mother told me once that, a long time ago, there were people who would eat only fresh, organic food because they thought processed food would make you fat. We didn’t have the luxury to be afraid of fat. 

By the time my parents arrived home, dinner was ready and the table was set. My father dropped his bag at the door and kissed my head. Other people saw him as a strict man — too strict, maybe — but he was also loving. I tried to see only the good in him. I tried. 

“How did the test go?” he asked me. I turned my back and pretended to be busy pouring the peas into a serving bowl. 

“Well, I’m still alive,” I said, forcing the joke. Candor would hate me. I was excellent at avoiding the truth. 

My mother hung up her grey jacket on the coat rack. Like my father, she worked for the government, but she managed city improvement projects. She would have been the one to recruit volunteer proctors for the aptitude tests. Most of the time, though, she led initiatives to distribute food, resources, and job opportunities among the factionless.

“I heard there was some kind of upset with one of the tests,” she said.

A cold hand seized my throat. I lowered my head and brought the bowl to the table, then hurried off to wash my hands. 

“Really?” said Dad. 

“I don’t know much, but one of the Candor proctors told me that something went wrong with one of the tests, so she had to report the results verbally. Apparently the student got sick and was sent home early.” My mother placed a napkin next to each plate on the table, and my father stepped in to finish the job for her. “Did you two hear about that?”

“No,” Caleb said. My back was to him, but I could hear his innocent smile.

He couldn’t be Candor either.

“Well, if it was one of the Candor proctors, that means the student was from Abnegation,” said Dad.

Oh, boy.

“Not necessarily,” said Mom. “Irene is head of the test integrity board, so she checks all of the results. Just in case of — well — proctors tampering with the scores.”

My shoulders relaxed. I realized I had been washing my hands for well over a half minute and quickly turned the water off. 

“I just hope the student’s alright,” said Mom.

We sat at the table. We had our routines. We passed each serving dish clockwise; no one ate until everyone was served. Dad extended his hands to Mom and Caleb, and they extended their hands back to him and to me, and Dad gave thanks to God for food and work and friends and family. Not every Abnegation family was religious, but my father said we should try not to see those differences because they would only divide us. I was never sure what to make of that.

“Andrew,” said Mom. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

I looked up, but she was looking at Dad. She took his hand and moved her thumb in a small circle over his knuckles. My parents loved each other, but rarely showed affection like this in front of us. They always taught us that physical contact was powerful, to be used only sparingly. Was I so focused on myself that I didn’t notice Dad’s sagging shoulders? The shadows under his eyes?

“Work was...difficult,” Dad admitted. “Well, work was difficult for Marcus. I was fine, really.”

Marcus Eaton was my father’s coworker, another councilman. In the days before the factions, Chicago was run by corrupt, selfish leaders who were elected based on wealth and image only, leading to division and ruin for the whole city. To prevent this, the city voted to construct a new government, led by a council of fifty of the city’s wisest, most humble leaders — all from Abnegation. Selflessness was incorruptible, after all. 

The councilmen and councilwomen were selected by their Abnegation peers based on service history, wisdom, and leadership ability. Representatives from the other factions could speak in meetings on behalf of particular issues, but ultimately, the decisions for the city were the council’s. And while the council technically made decisions together, Marcus was particularly influential.

It had been that way since the beginning of the Great Peace, when the factions were formed. I could only imagine the system persisted because of fear of what might happen otherwise: war. 

“Is it about that report?” said Mom.

I looked up. “A report?”

Caleb shot me a warning look. In true Abnegation fashion, children were not permitted to speak at the dinner table unless our parents asked us a direct question, which they usually didn’t. Our listening ears were a gift to them, as my father said. They would give us their listening ears after dinner, in the family room.

But if my parents wanted to point that out, they kept it to themselves. “A report released by Jeanine Matthews,” said Dad, his brow tightening. “Erudite’s lone representative.” 

This wasn’t the first time Dad had spat her name like that. From what I had heard, she was sharp as a razor, cunning as a fox, and maddening as a pebble in a shoe.

“It wasn’t even a report,” Dad continued. “Just another conspiracy theory about Marcus’s character, probably written by one of Jeanine’s paranoid interns.”

I had slid to the edge of my seat. “What did it say?”

“Beatrice,” said Caleb quietly.

I shot him a look right back, fast enough that our parents wouldn’t see. If anyone should be chastising me, it wouldn’t be my four-minutes-younger brother. 

“Jeanine claims,” said Dad, “that perhaps Marcus’s daughter vanished because Marcus — abused her to death.”

A silence, thick enough to cut with a serving spoon, fell across the table. 

Five years ago, when she was just thirteen, Abigail Eaton went missing in the night. Panic swept through the whole city. Every Dauntless guard and Candor investigator in our police force scoured the factions to find her, but found nothing. Marcus was devastated. Abigail had been his only family, since his wife died giving birth to their second child. The infant died only minutes later.

And the way he was repaid was with this. Baseless conspiracy theories about Abigail’s disappearance. The most popular was that Abigail had been kidnapped by a horde of factionless gang members, but investigators had ruled that out. Others said she committed suicide and her body was just never found. I had never met her. She was in a different grade at school, didn’t attend community events, and never joined her father at our house for dinner. I had no idea what to make of the rumors that Marcus abused her. My parents felt pretty strongly in certain ways, however.

“She thinks Marcus — ” Mom hesitated before the word “ —  _ murdered  _ his own daughter?”

“Absolutely not,” replied Dad. “She doesn’t believe it at all. She’s just trying to spread rumors.”

“But that’s what the report said?”

He sighed and set down his fork. “Yes.”

My mother pursed her lips. “If anyone’s abusing anyone,” she snapped, “it’s Jeanine abusing poor Marcus. As if he needs to be reminded of his loss.”

“His daughter’s betrayal, you mean,” Dad grunted.

The silence fell again. Our mother’s thoughts about Abigail Eaton’s disappearance manifested themselves in locks on our windows at night and never letting us out of the house without someone by our side. Our father’s thoughts were less apparent, but we all knew them. He believed, like others in Abnegation, that she had run away. Done what few Abnegation-born ever did and left. Abandoned selflessness for a life of...anything but.

“But I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Dad. “The Erudite have been attacking us with these sort of gossip pieces for months. And this isn’t the end. There will be more, I guarantee it.”

I shouldn’t have spoken again, but I couldn’t help myself. I blurted, “Why are they doing this?”

“Why don’t you take this opportunity to listen to your father, Beatrice?” Mom asked gently. It was phrased like a suggestion, not a command. I avoided the look of disapproval that I knew Caleb was pointing my way. 

I shoved a spoonful of peas into my mouth. Tasteless and oversoft, they fell apart in my mouth.

“You know why,” said Dad. “Because we have something they want. Valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places. We should be thankful that we know better.”

I swallowed the peas almost without chewing. Whatever I chose, I couldn’t choose Erudite. I never looked anything like my father, never spoke or acted or thought like my father, but I was his daughter.

My parents cleaned up after dinner. They didn’t even let Caleb help them, because we were supposed to keep to ourselves this night instead of gathering in the family room. We needed time to think about our results. 

Or lack of.

I wanted to tell them. The words burned me so bad, like hot food on the roof of my mouth, and I wanted to spit it out. They might be able to help me if I could talk about it. But every time I blinked, all I could see was Irene’s round black glasses, glowing blue in illegal light, and her warning echoed in every sound around me.  _ It would get both of us killed.  _

In our bedroom, when Caleb would normally relax while I went to the bathroom to shower, Caleb stopped in the doorway. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“We should think of our family,” he said sternly. He met my eyes. “But we should also think about ourselves.”

For a moment, I couldn’t look away. I had never seen him think of himself, much less insist on selfishness. I realized that, for the first time, my younger brother was being completely honest with me. And it burned more than my blank screen ever could.

“Sure,” I told him, pushing his hand away. “Not like that’s hard for me.”

His eyes widened. “Beatrice, that’s — ”

“That’s not what you meant?” I finished.

“It’s not.”

“I know you only scold me because you know I’m not — not as selfless as you. Because you think that I belong somewhere else. That I always have.”

I had never yelled. Yelling was impolite and always selfish. I wasn’t yelling then, but I wanted to, I really wanted to. And I was close. 

“I didn’t say that,” Caleb said.

“Yes, you did, you told me to think of myself,” I retorted. “But guess what? You don’t have to worry. When I stay, I’ll keep out of your way — wouldn’t want you to feel burdened by me,  _ little brother _ .”

His lip twitched once at  _ when  _ and a second time at  _ little brother.  _ I knew what I had said. I met his eyes, a silent challenge. And he blinked first. 

“Okay,” was all he said, and went to his desk. I hurriedly grabbed my nightclothes from my drawers and rushed out of the room.

When I closed the bathroom door behind me, it was almost a slam. I slumped against the door. Just like every night, I ripped off my scarf and undercap, but today I couldn’t fold them. I crumpled them into a ball, threw them at the wall, and knotted my hands through my unraveling bun. I squeezed my eyes so hard that it hurt my head. 

It wasn’t as simple as Caleb seemed to think it to be. Either choose my family and stay, or choose myself and leave. It would require a great act of selflessness to choose Abnegation, to commit myself to a life that I couldn’t stand — or a great act of courage to choose anything else. I thought of the Dauntless girl with the crescent-moon scar, the howling of the train whistle that always echoed in the back of my mind. I thought of the chorus of Amity kids in the cafeteria, laughing as they sang, and how I would hum with them under my breath. And I thought of Irene from Candor, her snow-white suit and the confident  _ clack, clack  _ of her shoes and cane against the floor. 

I had always been told that I would know my true faction. It would call to me. But it wasn’t one, it wasn’t even two. It was none. It was all.

I didn’t belong anywhere, and tomorrow, I would have to convince the world that I did.


	5. Chapter 5

The bus we took to the Choosing Ceremony was filled with people in grey shirts and coats, our Sunday best. Normally, fine clothes were forbidden in Abnegation, but we all owned a couple nicer dresses or starched shirts for events like these, as a show of respect to our hosts. They were still all grey and painfully unadorned. When I leaned my face against the window, a pale ring of sunlight burned into the clouds like the end of a lit cigarette. I never wanted to smoke one myself — they were closely tied to vanity — but a mixed crowd of Candor and Dauntless smoked them in front of the building when we got off the bus.

I had to tilt my head back to see the top of the Hub, and even then, part of it faded into the clouds. It was the tallest building in the city. From my bedroom window back home, I could see the red lights on the twin prongs, blinking eternally, a warning to aircrafts that didn’t fly anymore.

I followed my parents up to the Hub, bunching my fingers around the stiff hems of my sleeves. Caleb walked in front of me, seeming calm. But maybe I’d be calm too, if I knew what I was going to do. Instead I was more concerned with whether or not my legs were going to give out on me as I walked up the front steps, a very real possibility.

We stopped in a corner of the crowded lobby. Dad pulled Caleb aside, and Mom was left with me.

“Beatrice,” she said. Her soft voice was almost lost in the chatter of a hundred other families. She and I were the same height, small, and she cupped my cheek to draw me close. 

“Mom,” I said.

I might have looked like her without my freckles. She ran her thumb over them, as if counting, before meeting my eyes again. Then she hugged me. 

“Whatever you choose,” she whispered in my ear, “I want you to be happy.”

“I’m already happy,” I said. It was true. If I had one wish, it would be to never leave this pocket of time in my mother’s arms. To never leave the scent of lye soap and home-baked bread and the thing that smelled just of her.

Mom pulled away. Her calloused hands slid down to my shoulders. “Every day,” she said, “I think of what might have happened if I chose differently, one way over another. Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake. But then — I look at you. And I realize that if I hadn’t trusted my gut, I wouldn’t have you.”

She blinked rapidly. Tears beaded on her eyelashes. She had to know what I wanted to do, or she wouldn’t have said it. I had to look away because my eyes were stinging, but it was too late. It was already happening. “Mom,” I choked, and buried my face into her shoulder.

She held me as I cried.

When we parted, she kissed my forehead and said, “I love you, Sunshine.” My father and brother were waiting, their eyes dry. “See you soon,” said Dad to Caleb. Without a trace of a doubt. I wiped my eyes on a fold of my headscarf and hurried towards them. I tried not to look back at Mom, because I knew if I did, I would just break down again.

Numb, I followed my family and faction up the stairs — selflessly leaving the crowded elevators for others — and then into the room where I would decide the rest of my life. I had lost my parents in the wash of grey. It didn’t matter anyway; sixteen-year-olds would sit separate from their parents anyway. 

The room was arranged in concentric circles around a central stage at the bottom. Sixteen-year-olds, those eligible to choose, sat in the lowest several circles, a blend of colors as heterogeneous as the school hallways. We were not called members yet; our decisions would make us initiates, and if we completed each faction’s initiation, we would become members. 

Above the first circles, in the majority remainder of the seats, sat five pie slices of observers. Not everyone in each faction came to the Choosing Ceremony, mostly just families. But enough of them came that they seemed to fill the room to the ceiling. Helplessly, I tagged along in Caleb’s wake as he strode down to the inner circles.

The responsibility to conduct the ceremony rotated from faction to faction each year, and this year was Abnegation’s. Marcus Eaton would give the opening address and read the names in reverse alphabetical order. Caleb would choose before me.

On the central stage were five metal bowls so large they could hold my entire body, if I curled up. Each one contained a substance to represent each faction: grey stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, hot coals for Dauntless, and glass for Candor. When Marcus called my name, I would walk to the stage. I would not speak. He would offer me a knife. I would cut into my hand and sprinkle my blood into the bowl of the faction I chose.

My blood on the stones. Sizzling on the coals. Soaking the dirt. Staining the glass.

We were arranged in alphabetical order, according to the last names we might leave behind. I sat between Caleb and Oona Posner, a tall Amity girl with the longest brown hair I had ever seen. When we sat, Caleb grabbed my hand, squeezing my palm so tightly it hurt, but I didn’t let go. The last time we held hands was at my father’s best friend’s funeral, as my father cried. I wasn’t sure if he would reach out to me after our fight, but we needed each other’s strength now, just as we did then. 

The room slowly came to order. I should have been observing the other factions; I should have been taking in as much information as I could; I might have even been able to find my parents somewhere in the slice of grey. But I could only stare at the lanterns across the room. I tried to lose myself in the blue glow.

As the room fell to silence, Marcus stepped up to the podium in front of Abnegation. He was a stocky man in his forties with ashen skin that bore the creases of someone much older. Still, his keen eyes flickered around the room, as if memorizing every face as he saw it, and even when he cleared his throat into the microphone, his soft voice seemed to command respect from every person in the room.

“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony. Welcome to the day we honor the democratic philosophy of our ancestors, the philosophy that every man has the right to choose his own way in the world.”

Or, it occurred to me, one of five predetermined ways. I squeezed Caleb’s fingers as hard as he was squeezing mine. 

“Our dependents are now sixteen. They stand on the precipice of adulthood, and it is now up to them to decide what kind of people they will be.” Marcus was solemn, his words slow, as if weighing each one. I wondered if he was thinking of his daughter Abigail, who would have chosen just two years ago. “Decades ago, our ancestors realized that it is not political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality — of humankind’s inclination toward evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray.”

My eyes shifted to the bowls in front of Marcus. What did I believe? I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I  _ didn’t know. _

“Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.”

I couldn’t disagree. I had not been able to apologize to Caleb after yesterday’s fight, and the sickness in my gut made me want to stop the whole ceremony just to make amends.

“Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.”

I had often wondered what it was like to live one’s life in a constant quest for self enlightenment — a guilty pleasure, admittedly. But after Jeanine’s report, ruling out Erudite had been the only part of my choice that was easy.

“Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.”

I bit the side of my cheek when I thought of Irene — hiding the truth of my aptitude scores from me. It was her fault that I was so torn. If she had just told the truth…

“Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.”

But what if it really was just me being selfish? Thinking that I was too good to stay? Thinking that I might be that special snowflake who changed factions?

“And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.”

Was I just scared? Scared of never being good enough for my own family, like I always had been?

My legs had gone numb, like all the life had drained out of them. The life was leaking out from under my scalp, too, percolating through the hot folds of my scarf.

“Working together, these five factions have lived in peace for many years, each contributing to a different sector of society. Abnegation has fulfilled our need for selfless leaders in government; Candor has provided us with trustworthy and sound leaders in law; Erudite has supplied us with intelligent teachers and researchers; Amity has given us understanding counselors and caretakers; and Dauntless strengthens us with protection from threats both within and without. But the reach of each faction is not limited to its role. We give one another far more than can be described. In our factions, we find meaning. We find purpose. We find life.”

There was an inscription on the cover of every modern civics textbook, an old saying from the days before the factions:  _ The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.  _ More than family, our factions were where we belonged.

Marcus added, “Apart from them, we could not thrive.”

It was uncanny, the hush that could sweep through a thousand people. We had been silent before, but now it was as if one could close their eyes and believe they were alone. The hush was heavy with our worst fear, greater even than the fear of death: to be factionless.

After the pause, Marcus cleared his throat again and continued. “Therefore, this day marks a happy occasion — the day on which we receive our new initiates, who will work with us toward a better society and a better world.”

A round of applause. It was muffled. Maybe my scarf was too tight. I let go of Caleb’s hand to press my palms into my legs, because if there was enough pressure, I didn’t shake. Marcus read the first names, but I couldn’t tell one syllable from the other. Perhaps he’d call my name, I wouldn’t hear, and I wouldn’t have to choose.

One by one, each sixteen-year-old stepped out of line and walked to the middle of the room. The first boy to choose decided on Amity, the same faction from whence he came. He had to squeeze his eyes shut as he made the cut, but soon his blood trickled onto soil, and beaming he strode proudly to the slice of yellow.

The room was like a clock, moving and shifting and churning, a new name and a new person choosing, a new knife and a new choice. I recognized all of them by face, but the names were mostly new.

“Sajida Touma,” Marcus said.

Sajida Touma, of Candor, was the first person to stumble on her way to the bowls. I knew her. We never spoke, but she wore a hijab similar to my Abnegation scarf, and we often found ourselves fixing them in the bathrooms together. She was normally composed as any Candor, but today, she slipped. She threw her arms out and regained her balance before hitting the floor. Her olive face flooded with red. When she reached the center, she looked to the Candor bowl, and then to the Abnegation bowl — the glass reflecting blue light, the dark stones absorbing it.

Marcus offered Sajida the knife. She breathed deeply — I watched her chest rise — and, as she exhaled, gripped the blade. Then, with a rapid jerk, she dragged it across her palm and squeezed her fist over a bowl. Her blood dripped onto grey stones, and she became the first of us to switch factions. The first faction transfer.

A mutter rose from the Candor section and I stared at the floor. They would see Sajida as a traitor from now on. Despite our constitution’s emphasis on choosing one’s own path, loyalty couldn’t help but be valued by all. Her Candor family would have the option of visiting her in her new faction, three weeks later on Visiting Day, but they wouldn’t, because she left them. Her absence would haunt their hallways and she would be a space they couldn’t fill. And then time would pass and the hole would close, like when an organ was removed and the body’s fluids flowed into the space it left. Humans could never tolerate emptiness for long.

“Caleb Prior,” said Marcus.

Caleb reached for my hand to squeeze it one last time, and as he walked away, cast a long look at me over his shoulder. I couldn’t tell what was in the look — whether it was bitterness over the last words we’d said to each other, a silent apology that I might never get to hear, or something else. His feet moved deliberately to the center of the room, and his hands accepted the knife with purpose. He pressed into the knife with surgical confidence. He stood with blood pooling in his palm. His lip snagged on his teeth. He breathed out. And then in.

And then he held his hand over the Erudite bowl, tinting the water a deeper shade of red.

The mutters lifted into outraged cries. It was like the floor had given out from under me; I could barely think straight. My brother. My selfless brother. My brother, a faction transfer. My brother, born for Abnegation,  _ Erudite? _

And it made so much sense that I almost felt stupid. The everpresent stack of books on Caleb’s desk, the battered composition notebook always tucked under his arm, his shaking hands sliding along his legs after the aptitude test. When he told me to think of myself, he wasn’t saying that I didn’t belong in Abnegation. He was warning me that he might not, either.

The crowd of Erudite was full of smug smiles and side nudges. The Abnegation, normally so placid, rippled with tense murmurs and glared across the room. The animosity was so tangible you could have cut it with one of the knives.

“Excuse me,” said Marcus, but he was too soft for the crowd to hear him. He put his mouth up to the microphone and bellowed, “Excuse me, QUIET, PLEASE!”

Slowly, the murmurs died down. A temporary truce.

And then all of the hostile eyes turned to me.

Marcus had said my name. A shudder pushed me up, like a cosmic hand dragging the puppet string of my spine. Halfway to the bowls, I was sure I would choose Abnegation. I had to. To tell the Erudite that they couldn’t have all of us. I could do it. I could see it. 

I would grow into a woman draped in grey, marry a quiet man in grey, bear children in grey. I would serve during the week, volunteer on weekends, find the peace of routine, spend nights quiet in front of the fireplace, with the certainty that I would be safe, that I would never have to speak of the last, conflicted twenty-four hours of my life ever again.

I set my eyes on Caleb, sitting among a wash of blue. He met my eyes and nodded. We’d never been the kind of twins who knew what the other was thinking, but this time I knew. My left knee buckled and I caught myself. If Caleb wasn’t fit for Abnegation, how could I be? But the nod asked: what choice did I have anymore? He left us. I was all that remained. For the last time, in a grand and irreversible finale, I had no choice but to sacrifice my own needs. Sacrifice what I felt was right to make my younger brother proud of me. 

I would have to be the child that stayed. If not for Caleb, I had to do this for my parents. I had to. And it made my blood boil. 

Marcus offered me the knife. I met his eyes — they were a dark, aqua blue, a strange color — and took it. I turned to the bowls. Dauntless fire and Abnegation stones were to my left. Amity soil and Candor glass to my right. Erudite water behind my back. 

I had chewed such a hole in the inside of my cheek that I might only have to open my mouth and enough blood would flow to taint a bowl. I breathed hard. It wasn’t enough oxygen. Someone had wrapped their hands around my neck and twisted my headscarf to strangle me, I was gasping and crying but the room just stared; I kicked and screamed and I knew that all they saw was a girl standing still and silent in the middle of five waiting bowls.

I wanted to rip off all my clothes and feel the wind rushing through my hair; I wanted to sit beneath a tree and sing myself to sleep; I wanted to lie under the stars and count each and every one until I knew them all by heart. I wanted to return to my mother’s arms. I wanted anything but this, anything but the flickering memory of a blank screen in Irene’s glasses. 

And I wanted answers. An answer to why. An answer to know if I was really, truly alone now.

I bit my cheek harder and dragged the blade down. I didn’t feel. I didn’t care. Then, with a gasp I couldn’t contain, I stepped forward and opened my fist, and my blood trickled into the glass tiles.

I would know the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And everything changes :)
> 
> Early update since this weekend will be busy busy busy. Regular updates will resume next Saturday. 
> 
> This is where the fic will begin to completely diverge (never ceases to be funny to me) from canon. "Oh no," you reply, "she chose Candor; there won't be fun suspense or fighting like there would be in Dauntless!" O ye of little faith. I wrote De Facto. Lawyers can get themselves into a hell of a lot of trouble.
> 
> Anyway — enjoy! Things are gonna get weird.
> 
> Reviews are update food.


	6. Chapter 6

I wouldn’t have the chance to process my choice for the rest of the day. 

I trained my eyes on the floor as I took a seat in the initiates’ row. My gaze snagged on an olive-skinned couple a row above us, Sajida Touma’s parents — the woman was wearing a black hijab and the man had Sajida’s face. When they saw me, they ducked into each other and began to cry. I looked across the stage. Sajida sat below my parents. I couldn’t see any of their faces clearly, but I knew she was looking at me, and I wondered if my parents were crying, too.

As the ceremony dragged on, I tried to form a plan. I had to see my parents one more time. When the last girl made her choice, the room jolted violently into the clock again, a great machine of motion and noise. The Dauntless left first in an impatient stampede, then the Amity because they had the longest trip back home, and then Candor. Us Candor. It felt weird to even think the two words together. I tried to move to the other side of the aisle to get closer to the waiting pie slice of Abnegation, to catch a glimpse of them. 

I immediately wished I hadn’t. Dad’s eyes burned into mine with accusation. At first, when I felt the heat behind my eyes, I feared that he had found a way to set me on fire, to punish me for what I had done. But it was worse. I was about to cry again.

Beside him, Mom was smiling.

The people behind me pressed me forward, away from my family, who would be the last ones to leave. They would probably stay to stack the chairs and clean the bowls. I twisted my head around to find Caleb in the crowd of Erudite behind me, but I had not realized how many of the Candor wore high heels. I was too small to see over their heads. I thought I might have caught his easy smile, once. It wrenched my stomach. If it was so easy for him, maybe it should have been easy for me, too.

I glanced at a feminine-looking boy wearing a misfitting Erudite sweater. His face was tight, like he was holding in vomit. Had I looked like that when I was walking up? Why wasn’t I feeling like that now? I had spent all of my worry-energy on what faction I would choose and never really weighed what would happen if it was Candor, of all things. Honestly, most of last night’s sleeplessness had been spent on a terrifying fantasy of what might face me if I had chosen _Dauntless._

Habit led me to look around for the stairs, but the crowd of Candor filed to the elevators and inadvertently I let out a relieved sigh.  I was still too shellshocked with myself to comprehend what I had just done. But that was okay for now. For the first time in my life, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the ease of taking the lower road.

We stepped into the crisp, cold air of the plaza. I blinked, and for a second I was bewildered — a forlorn little girl in grey, lost among tall adults in fine suits — but they all headed confidently towards a line of buses, and I couldn’t help but tag along with. I had begun to follow the Erudite transfer without meaning to; or maybe he was following me, it was hard to tell. Yet I realized my back was straighter than ever, my chin tilted just slightly up. Like everyone else around me. I bared my face to the sky, clear in the noon sun.

We boarded the waiting buses. Candor-born initiates stuck with their families, taking up large sections of available seats and forcing me to the very back of the bus, but I didn’t mind. The families had a few children, some as young as toddlers, and all of them dressed in miniature white suits. The sight cheered me up immensely. 

The awkward Erudite boy sat on my right. Then, on my left, appeared a familiar face — Oona Posner, the Amity girl who had chosen after me. 

“Hey,” she said. “Long time no see, huh?”

My eyes widened. “You chose Candor?” I had been so shocked by myself that I hadn’t noticed anyone else’s choices until the ceremony was over. 

Oona shrugged, her long brown curls bouncing on her shoulders. “It’s a long story why, but I always knew I had to. Thanks for going before me, I was so nervous.”

It was good to know that even someone confident in their choice was nervous. “Heh, no problem.”

“Who’s the guy?” asked Oona, pointing to the Erudite boy. He had been side-eyeing our exchange and startled. 

“Oh — I’m, uh, Ravi,” he said. He was breathy, like he’d just sprinted a long distance.

“How’re you feeling, Ravi?” asked Oona. 

“Honestly,” he sighed, “like I just asked to become factionless. But, whatever, you know?”

Oona and I laughed. 

“I’m Oona,” she said, reaching across my lap to shake Ravi’s hand. “And this is — ”

She paused to look at me. “You know my name,” I said mildly. 

“I know your Abnegation name,” said Oona. “Faction’s not the only thing you can change today.”

Now I hesitated. Change my name? I had thought about it, once or twice. I thought of my mother’s nickname for me, Sunshine. She’d always wanted to name me something to do with the sun. When she had been pregnant with me and Caleb, the doctor had told her to expect two girls, so my parents agreed to each name one. But when my “sister” turned out to be a brother, adjustments had to be made. In true selfless fashion, my parents fought over who would give up the honor of naming the baby girl. The name Beatrice had been a compromise. The “trice” half came from my father’s choice, Theresa, and the “be” half came from my mother’s choice — 

“Phoebe,” I said. “My name is Phoebe Prior.” I couldn’t bring myself to change my last name. The first name sounded strange enough as it was, rolling off my tongue.

“Phoebe,” Ravi repeated, shaking my hand too. 

“I just picked it. Is it weird?” I asked tentatively. 

He shrugged. “I like it.”

“It’s pretty!” said Oona. “It suits you.”

At that, my cheeks warmed. Compliments were far and few between in Abnegation, of course, and as far as I could remember, this was the first time someone had ever told me I was pretty. I did not know how to handle it. As the bus puttered down the road, and as we three transfers smiled together in the back row, I began to feel okay.

Whatever I had gotten myself into, maybe it wouldn’t be half bad. 

* * *

Candor headquarters was large enough to contain an entire world. Or so it seemed to me.

It was a wide cement building that overlooked what was once the river. Like everything about the city, it was a patchwork quilt of architecture, its ancient foundations stitched with steel, prism-like glass filling holes in the art deco stone. The historic sign said  MERC IS MART — it used to read “Merchandise Mart”, but most people referred to it as the Merciless Mart, because the Candor were merciless, but honest. They seemed to have embraced the nickname.

We got off the bus into the plaza north of the building. But as soon as the crowd of Candor formed, it dissipated like smoke on the wind. Some people went straight for the front doors of the Mart. Many of the families started toward the nearby apartment complexes. Even the Candor-born initiates were left behind in the plaza with the rest of us, looking around bewildered and leaderless.

“So...we just stand here?” I murmured. Ravi shrugged.

Then the Mart doors opened and someone strode towards us. We all turned.

And my heart jumped in my chest.

It was her. The Dauntless woman with the crescent-moon scar. She was so much taller up close than from what I had seen from the train, towering over even the tallest initiate. She was dressed like her faction, all in rebellious black and dark hair in a boy’s short cut. But her jeans and leather jacket were simple and professional, lacking the typical buckles and patches that a Dauntless youth might usually show off. Her dark, narrow eyes passed over each of us, critical, unwavering. The scar pinched her left eye into a glare.

“Candor initiates,” she said, her voice deep and commanding. “My name is Ace. I am head of security at the Candor Institute of Law and Investigation.”

“Excuse me?” said a blond Candor-born girl. “But what’s a Dauntless doing at the Institute?”

A couple of the other initiates echoed her. But Ace didn’t so much as flinch. 

“What’s your name?” asked Ace. 

The girl smirked. “Aletheia Albright,” she said, as if it meant something.

“I assume you’re related to Judge Albright, then?”

“I’m his daughter, yes.”

“Has your father told you about the death threats he gets every day? Or about the janitor who made a bomb out of cleaning supplies and tried to detonate it in a crowded courtroom? Or about the factionless murderer who tried to strangle his own defense attorney?”

Aletheia went as white as a sheet. “Well — yes — ”

“When you made your choice today, did you not make an oath?” asked Ace. “An oath that you would fight for justice and truth?”

“I guess — ”

“Every day that you work for that oath,” Ace told her, “you risk your life for a greater cause. You stop at nothing to make sure that the justice and integrity of this city is sound. That makes us more similar than you think.”

The crowd had fallen silent. And now it was Ace’s turn to smirk, pulling at her wicked red scar.

“Welcome to Candor,” she said. “You have much to fear.”

Ace led our herd across the street from the Merciless Mart, to a newly-built glass building similar to the surrounding apartments. The only thing that set it apart was the metal statue of a blindfolded woman, holding a set of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. She guarded the front doors. I would later learn that she was Themis, the Greek goddess of justice.

Inside the doors was a buzz of activity. Teenagers in suits and ties, from kids barely older than us to near-adults, milled around the huge white lobby. In the center of the lobby was a huge glass wall, and beyond the wall was an open-air courtyard filled with trees and flowers. Everywhere I looked, I saw a student with a laptop, an overflowing file of papers, and a thermos of coffee.

“So this is law school,” Oona marveled.

“I left Erudite to get away from studying,” Ravi groaned. “I’ve made such a big mistake.”

I peered at him. “If not studying…what did you  _ think  _ that Candor law students did?”

He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know, okay? I failed Upper Level Faction History. I failed a lot of things.”

Ace led our group down a corridor to a lecture hall. A Candor professor was already at the podium and typing on his laptop. He was a tall, thin man — everyone here seemed tall and thin — with the most immaculate hair I had ever seen. Every colorless strand had a place.

Once we were all seated, Ace said something inaudible to the professor. He nodded and Ace stepped back to stand at the door, her arms folded.

The professor closed his laptop. “Good afternoon,” he said. He had a flat voice, I noticed. But an interesting one. “My name is Judge Lysander Morris. I am the director of initiate certification here at the Institute.”

He looked out over our group, scanning the faces. For a brief moment, his eyes locked on mine, even though Oona, Ravi, and I had chosen a rather unobtrusive spot near the back of the room.

“As many of you know, your initiation into Candor will be no small matter,” said Morris. “The process will span the course of six weeks, beginning tomorrow morning. At the end of these six weeks, you shall be evaluated, and if you pass, you shall be made a student member. Once a student member, you shall study for three more years, and if you pass, you shall be made a full member, free to work and serve however you please. You could say, then, that your initiation lasts three years and six weeks.”

He chuckled as if he had just made a joke. I didn’t find anything funny about it. At least school for three more years wasn’t that bad...

“But I urge you not to worry about your three student years quite yet. It is often said,” Morris added, “that the next six weeks will make you wish you had never been born.”

Oh.

Judge Morris must have noticed the collective look of horror that crossed our faces. Ravi looked like he was about to pass out. 

“In the topic of good news, however — I would like you all to reach into your desk drawer.”

The tables had small drawers under them and, all curious, we opened them. Inside were black leather cases, and inside of those were sleek silver laptop computers. My eyes widened. I had used computers for school and some community events, but never had one of my own…

“These are yours for the duration of your time here in the Institute, however long that might be,” said Morris. “You will login using your date of birth for the username and ‘Candor’ for the password — Abnegation transfers, please see me afterward and we can find your birth date on record.” 

Everyone turned and looked. I was the only Abnegation transfer here. My cheeks swelled with heat and I closed my laptop. Thankfully, Oona raised her hand, drawing the eyes away. 

“Judge Morris?” she asked. “You said temporary password, are we changing it?”

“Good question,” said Morris. “Yes, you can do so when you’re logged in.”

“But why? I thought we were supposed to be honest about everything; don’t passwords stop that?”

A few of the Candor-born snickered, but Morris held up his hand. “The Amity girl has a point. Also a very good question. We would prefer not to keep secrets, but in your studies, you may be dealing with potentially confidential information. We also find that passwords help prevent academic dishonesty, as well. Thank you, Miss…”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oona Posner,” Oona offered.

“Miss Posner,” said Judge Morris. Oona beamed. The Candor had a habit of calling people by their last name, I realized, and it felt refreshingly professional.

“On your laptops,” Morris continued, “you will find your daily schedules, your class syllabi, and lists of your required reading materials. All materials can be checked out from our law library.”

I didn’t want to make someone else share their screen, but Ravi slid his over. “I think we all have kinda the same schedule,” he whispered. “Which sucks. I was hoping that the Candor were more of night owls.” I looked and saw that Ravi had classes six days a week, starting at 9 a.m. Not bad, but Ravi didn’t strike me as someone who got up before that time. If I was honest, I didn’t care much for it either.

“Also on your laptops, you will find your exam schedule,” said Morris. “At the end of these six weeks, you will all be taking the same four exams — legal procedure, analytical and logical reasoning, investigative technique, and argumentative technique. You must pass all four exams in order to be admitted to the final stage of initiation.”

A Candor-born boy in the front raised his hand. “Are there grades?”

“Grades on the exams? Well, you pass or you fail.”

“No, in the classes. Do you have to pass all the classes or just the exams?”

“You don’t have to pass the classes, no,” said Morris. “In fact, you don’t have to attend the classes at all. The classes are meant to prepare you for the exams, and the assignments there have no bearing on your exam scores.”

“Oh, nice,” Ravi said, relieved.

“But if you don’t do well in the classes, you will most definitely fail the exams,” said Morris.

“And what happens if we fail the exams?” asked Oona.

“You will leave Candor,” said Morris indifferently, “and live factionless.”

“Oh, no,” Ravi said, less relieved.

Oona’s face went white as a sheet. In front of us, an Amity boy began to cry. I remembered the factionless teenager with the grey teeth, snatching my bag lunch from my hands. His dull, hopeless eyes. But instead of crying, like the Amity boy, all I felt was cold. 

I would be a member. I  _ had  _ to be.

There were hands up all over the lecture hall. “What does this have to do with how good of a Candor you’ll be?” asked a boy, a Dauntless transfer. “This isn’t Erudite, what’s with the stupid exams?”

A few people echoed his statements. Aletheia, the Candor-born who had challenged Ace before, even stood up. 

“I was told we were going to have to undergo the truth serum!” she said. “You know —  _ the Full Unveiling?” _

I knew about the Full Unveiling. Everyone learned about it in Faction History. In order to pass Candor initiation, an initiate had to undergo the truth serum in front of the whole faction and answer questions about their deepest, darkest secrets. In theory, it helped establish trust between members, as everyone knew everyone’s secrets, so there was no reason to lie about anything. 

“And why would we do that?” Morris asked.

“Because the initiations are supposed to judge how well we adhere to the faction’s core value,” said Aletheia proudly. “Not how well we take tests! Don’t you want to see how honest we are?”

From her sentry place near the door, Ace let out a bark of laughter. Morris and Ace shared an amused look.

“What’s so funny?” Aletheia demanded. 

“That’s the thing,” said Morris. “Yes — as the final stage of your examination, we will indeed be conducting the Full Unveiling on each of you. I assume that is what you speak of.”

The room dissolved into whispers and murmurs. I felt my stomach knot. I really hoped the Full Unveiling didn’t include the question “have you ever committed a felony related to aptitude tests”, because that would be awkward.

Aletheia’s face was red. “Well — duh!”

Morris’ mouth twitched. Perhaps it was a smirk. He stepped out from behind the podium and folded his hands in front of him. 

“The misconception about Candor — held even by our own children — is that our truth serum is the most efficient way of extracting the truth from a person. This is false. Our initiation might just sound like a bunch of ‘stupid tests’. But, I assure you, child — these ‘stupid tests’ can do more than even a serum to reveal who you truly are.”

I think it was meant as a joke, because Ace laughed again. But nobody else laughed. And now, I was no longer listening. I looked at the locked computer in my lap. If it had been hazy to me before, now I was more certain than ever that I was meant to be in Candor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the book canon, Candor initiation consists entirely of lie detection tests, ending with the Full Unveiling as described here. As a current law student, I find this dumb. Why choose between lie detection tests or exams that literally make people cry when you can have both? 
> 
> Reviews are update food.


	7. Chapter 7

**** After the warm welcoming speech, Judge Morris dismissed us. Ace took us to an office where we received our keys, and then led us to the living quarters. 

The initiate living quarters were designed to imitate a typical Candor member’s apartment. Four initiates lived in the same block, containing a common kitchen, living area, and two shared bathrooms, but which had four small, separate bedrooms. Candor members, I found, typically valued privacy — not because of any philosophy about keeping oneself accountable and honest to themself, but because lawyers tended to be introverts.

I would be sharing my block with Oona, Aletheia, and another Candor-born girl named Katie. While other factions kept the transfers and faction-born separate, Ace explained, Candor believed it healthy not to make such distinctions. I did not agree. I was not a fan of Aletheia. Katie wasn’t as bad, but she wasn’t smart, and tended to follow whatever Aletheia did and said.

It didn’t even take us having a conversation to know I didn’t like either of them. They didn’t even say anything to me and Oona as we made our way to our block.

When Aletheia opened the door with her key card, she stepped inside and said, “What the hell?”

Curiosity piqued, I followed after her. My jaw nearly dropped, but not for the same reason. The place was gorgeous — the front door opened on the living room, a spacious white place with one wall a whole window, drowning the room in the liquid golden light of the sun. The kitchen space would have made Mom and Caleb weep in joy. Branching out from the main area was a hallway with four doors, each with a sticky note with our names on it. That was the amazing part, for me. For Aletheia, it was something else. 

In the center of it all was a young woman in a simple brown dress and white apron, standing next to a cart of boxes. The woman stared at us, her dark eyes wide and mouth open. I knew who she was at once — a factionless housekeeper. Abnegation didn’t have housekeepers, but our labor organizations did help hire them out to other factions. It was just one of those small charities that we could do for the factionless, giving them jobs that better fit their inferior intellects. 

“What the hell?” Aletheia repeated, venom filling the words. “Why is she still here?”

“She’s just a housekeeper,” I said mildly.

Aletheia rolled her eyes. “And she’s not supposed to still be here.”

“Yeah,” Katie put in. “Housekeepers are to remain unseen and unheard.”

“I — I’m sorry — I was delivering new clothes for the residents,” said the woman.

“Unseen and  _ unheard,”  _ Aletheia repeated. Like Aletheia had cracked a whip over her head, the woman flinched, grabbed a box, and scurried into one of the bedrooms.

I whirled around. Aletheia was a good handspan taller than me and gave me a look down her nose. I didn’t want to start a fight with my new roommate, and I would normally be reprimanded for doing so. But the housekeeper hadn’t done anything wrong. And my parents weren’t here. So I snapped. 

“What’s your problem?” I said.

“What’s my problem?” she replied. “That housekeeper is supposed to be gone.”

“That’s not a reason to yell at her.”

“Hmm. Did I yell?”

“Okay, let’s maybe drop this,” Oona forced a laugh, but neither of us heard her.

“Look,  _ Stiff,” _ Aletheia said. “I don’t know who you think you are, acting like you know how this place works. I don’t care what you do in class. I don’t care about you at all.”

“Well, we know you’re meant to be here,” I cut in, “because you’re a terrible liar.”

Her eye twitched. “But in this apartment, I’d ask that you stay in your lane,” she told me. “Not like that’ll be hard...all your faction does is hide, anyway.”

“Ooooh,” said Katie.

Oona grabbed my shoulders. “Wow, Phoebe, let’s go look at our bedrooms!” she said loudly. 

It was just how she was raised, wanting to de-escalate conflict, so I went with it. But I couldn’t help saying, over my shoulder, “You’d think that someone who wants to argue for a living would be better at insults,” before Oona steered me into my room, the one at the furthest end of the hall. 

This time, the housekeeper was the first thing I noticed about my new surroundings. She knelt in my closet, hurriedly arranging several pairs of shoes on a rack. The next thing I noticed was that I  _ had  _ a closet. Instead of a plain door to the closet, there was a folding full-length mirror. I had a large desk, with shelves for books, a rolling chair, and plenty of space for me to set up my new laptop computer, as well as a bed so neatly made that I didn’t want to touch it for fear of messing it up.

And it was all mine. No sharing with Caleb. 

“This is incredible,” I murmured.

“Decor’s kinda ugly,” said Oona, “but I like that we don’t have to share.”

“You had to share too?” I asked.

“Yup.” She popped the P at the end. “Three stepsisters.”

Oh. Suddenly, Caleb didn’t seem like that bad of a roommate. “Holy smokes.”

“Yeah...well, I’m gonna go check out my room,” she said. “Don’t go after Aletheia, okay?”

“I won’t.” That was a lie. I think Oona knew that. But she left anyway.

In my closet, the housekeeper stood up, favoring her left leg. I wondered if she was hurt, or if she just always walked like that. I watched her hang several black and white scarves on a row of hooks. “Are those mine?” I asked. Startled, she turned around.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about if I would continue wearing the headscarves. I had just assumed that other factions would have me stop. 

“I was told that you always wear the hijab, ma’am,” said the housekeeper. She had a quiet voice, like she was always scared of being too loud.

“Well, it’s not really a hijab,” I confessed. “It’s not a religious thing.”

“Would you like me to take them back?”

“No, it’s okay.” I walked over to look at the clothes and the housekeeper ducked out of my way. There were several shirts, jackets, and skirts hanging above the small dresser, all in black and white, and all in my size. When I opened the dresser, I found more folded shirts and pants. “These are all for me?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you want something taken away, or you want more of something else, you can order it from your computer.”

“Thank you,” I said, amazed. I wanted to be happy at having so many new things — but then, when I looked at her, I was struck by a pang of sadness. She didn’t seem much older than me. But her eyes were deep with shadows and her black hair was already threaded with grey. I looked for a nametag on her chest, but she didn’t have one.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, ma’am?” asked the housekeeper.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She hesitated. “Miriam,” she said finally, her voice hoarse.

“Thank you, Miriam,” I said.

Miriam nodded. Then, when I didn’t tell her anything else, she gathered the empty boxes and ducked out of the room, leaving me alone. I wondered when the last time was that someone said thank you to her. My chest had begun to ache.

I shook my head and turned back to my room. I hadn’t looked at my schedule since getting my password from Judge Morris, and I had been practically burning with anticipation. Sitting at my desk, and taking some time to roll around in my new chair, I opened my laptop and found the weekly schedule.

Mealtimes every day were the same. Breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, dinner at six. I had one day off, Saturday. The other six days of the week were occupied with two classes a day, each two hours long — Legal Procedure and Argumentative Technique on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays; Reasoning and Investigative Technique on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In all, I was stunned. Judge Morris had given me the impression that we would be in class near constantly, but four hours of classes a day? That was actually a relief. Unless I was judging the schedule too quickly. I had a feeling that my sense of relief was premature.

The schedule said I had my first dinner with my new faction in an hour. I had all of these new clothes and some impressions to make. And Miss Aletheia “I’m Better Than Everyone” Albright would be there. I had never had an enemy before. Generally, people just didn’t care enough to make enemies with an Abnegation kid. But nevertheless, here she was. 

But also, I had to remember, I didn’t want to start out my new life caring about what other people thought of me. Of all the things I had turned over in my head last night, the only one that reached an official consensus was this: I was done trying to please people. I had driven myself half mad in Abnegation trying to do everything right. I would just be my true self. And if someone didn’t like it, that was their problem.

Candor would respect that...right?

I pushed that whole self-rediscovery debate aside and decided just to start somewhere simple — the clothes. I couldn’t wear my Abnegation grey to the first dinner, at least that was certain. So I undressed and dove right in.

The first thing I tried was close to home, a long black skirt, a white blouse, and black loafers. It was comfortable and modest, and I had seen Sajida from school wearing an identical outfit more than once. But I had so many other things to try, and an hour before dinner. So, what the hell. 

I tried the outfit with high heels, but I wobbled too much, so I changed into a shorter skirt so I could watch my feet. But I could also see the full length of my unshaved, freckled legs. I tried the pantyhose, but accidentally ripped them. So I went back to the long skirt. But now I didn’t like the blouse, so I found a long-sleeved black turtleneck, and because the skirt was also black, I exchanged it for loose white pants. I found a pair of black boots that were comfortable, and now I was comfortable too. Mostly. 

I had removed my grey scarf and undercap in order to change. My hair was exposed, still pulled back in its tight, scarf-worthy bun. I held the black scarf and the white scarf in my hands. 

I couldn’t take my eyes off the closet mirror reflection. The excited frenzy of trying on my new things was over, and now I stood with a girl I did not know. A girl in black and white and disgraceful orangish-red. I tried to make her cover up the red. Black scarf, white scarf. The weight of the silk was familiar, soothing on my neck and cheeks. Something the girl in grey would like. 

But the girl in black and white didn’t look right like that, and unbidden my mind flicked back to the times that I  _ hated  _ those scarves, hated having to bind myself just to be accepted by the people I loved, hated the immediate shame that rushed over me whenever a pin came undone or a fold slipped in front of anyone, even my own father. 

I hated seeing Amity kids fawn over another girl’s long red curls; I hated watching my own get snipped down and swept away into the trash bin. I hated passing Sajida in the halls, as she accepted compliments from her friends on her fancy silver-embroidered hijabs; I hated that she had the choice to wear it or take it off as she pleased. I hated seeing Dauntless kids come to school with their hair in every color and style; I hated the day when I was fourteen and met with one of them behind the school and traded test answers for a bottle of black dye so that maybe,  _ maybe,  _ I could look normal.

And I hated it when my mother knocked on the bathroom door that night, caught me with the dye bottle half-open, and held me as I cried into her shoulder. I hated it when she told me that she would have to take the dye away. I hated it when she pinned my hair up again into its careful bun, wrapped it with its cotton undercap, and hid the very last strands under the grey linen scarf. I hated it when she said, “God made you perfect just the way you are, Sunshine.”

If God made me perfect, then why did I have to hide?

I had collapsed on my bed. I was shaking. Crying. I had done a lot of crying in the past few days, and I did not like it. I missed Mom. I missed Dad. I missed Caleb. I missed my house. Why did I do this? Why did I choose Candor? Just to follow some harebrained idea that a Candor test proctor lied to me about my aptitude? What if she hadn’t? What if I really was meant to live in Abnegation forever? But here I was, plunging myself into a life that I didn’t know if I wanted to live, a life with computers and law classes and stuck-up roommates and suits and ties and no obligations to anyone but myself. The most permanent impulse decision ever. I would have to deal with it for the rest of my life.

Unless I couldn’t. If I couldn’t survive these next six weeks of classes, I would be factionless. Maybe by next year I would be on the other side, dressed in brown, working a job like Miriam’s. I had been so focused on trying to figure out who I was that I didn’t consider that I risked becoming nobody in the process. What did my aptitude test scores matter if I had just doomed myself to becoming factionless?

I kept telling myself that it would be alright here. I could look at my reflection whenever I wanted. I could befriend Oona and Ravi and maybe even Aletheia with time, and I could do my hair however I wanted, and I could let the housekeeper clean up my messes. 

I slipped on the silk sheets and collapsed on the floor. My forearms had to be bruised now, but I just pressed my forehead into the wood as the tears came faster. 

It didn’t matter that the next time I saw my parents, on Visiting Day, they would barely recognize me — if they came at all. It didn’t matter that I ached at even a split-second memory of their faces. Even Caleb’s, despite how much we had hurt each other. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. 

_ What have I done? What have I done? Oh, God, what have I done — _

“Phoebe?” said Oona from outside my door. “Can you help me zip up my dress?”

I scrambled to my feet and looked in the mirror. “Just a second!” I called, trying to steady my voice. It wasn’t too obvious that I had been crying, at least. But my hair was still in a messy bun, and I was clenching the two scarves so tight that my hands were trembling. An impulse decision later, and I hung the two scarves back on the hooks on the wall. I pulled my bun out so fast that the elastic snapped.

Inhaling, I opened the door and prayed that Oona wouldn’t notice. But then something better happened. She noticed.

“Oh my gosh,” she squealed. “You look gorgeous!”

“Th-thanks,” I stammered, my cheeks flooding with heat. Oona’s eyes were wide as saucers as she stared at my hair. I let her inside and closed the door.

“Is that your natural hair?” she asked, fluttering around me. “I thought you were black! How do you have  _ red hair?” _

“Is it...weird?”

“No, it’s incredible! You’re so cute! That’s why you wore the hijab all the time?!”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “My parents thought that I would draw too much attention. And I am black, at least, um, my mom is, but genetics are silly sometimes.”

“Can I touch it?”

The question was so odd it took me off guard, but maybe it was an Amity thing. “Sure?” I said, and in a whirl Oona sat me down on my bed and began to pat my hair. She even took a brush from my dresser and began to gently work it through the coils.

“Please tell me it’s here to stay,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied with a half-laugh. I might have a hard time trusting my own judgment. Oona’s judgment, that I could accept.

“Good.” She finished brushing and got up to face me. “Okay, your turn, zip me. This dress is drafty.”

Laughing, I helped her with her dress. She had chosen a simple white thing with a flowy skirt that reached her knees, and once I had zipped her up, she slipped a black jacket over her shoulders. Unlike me, she had embraced the high heels with gusto and was now almost a full head taller than me. Loose and effeminate; an echo of her yellow Amity outfit from before. The only major change was her hair, now in a giant, elaborate bun held in place by two long needles. She, too, was gorgeous, I realized, and when we were both dressed and stood in front of my mirror together, we looked quite the couple.

“Shall we?” I joked, holding out my arm. 

Oona nodded and accepted. Linked arm in arm, we stepped outside, miles away from the people we were when we walked in. 

* * *

When we went downstairs to the dining center, everyone was looking at me. Which was very, very new.

Oona told me that people wondered why I hid my head and skin, because my brother and I were well-known Christians and not Muslim in the least, but I had not realized what “people wondered” really meant until I saw the room full of open jaws. I couldn’t help but hesitate in the doorway.

“Just act normal,” Oona whispered to me. 

“I would like to go back to my room and jump out of the window,” I whispered back. “They’re staring.”

“Of course they are,” she replied. “You’re the prettiest girl in the room.”

Which was saying something. Among the starers was Aletheia, who was wearing a white dress that showed a lot of skin. But nobody cared about her. Just me and my new self.

The dining hall was a long room with glass walls and glittering crystal chandeliers, reflecting rainbows from the light within and in the light of the setting sun. All of the tables were set with white tablecloths, silver plates, and elaborately folded black napkins. I had heard that the Candor enjoyed formal-styled dining. I had no idea that it was every meal. Most of the initiates seemed to be clustered in one corner, so Oona and I found empty seats among a few other transfers. I sat next to Ravi, who sported an untied black bowtie.

“What’s wrong with your tie?” I asked him.

“Leaving it untied contributes to my carefree, nonconformist persona,” he said.

“Not sure if they’re big on personas here,” said Lars, a huge, hulking Dauntless transfer. He had sat next to me in a few classes at school, and now he looked at me. “Hey, Beatrice, love the hair.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised. “But — it’s Phoebe now.” It still felt weird to say.

“We can change our names?” asked Lars. 

“Yeah, they never told you that?” said Ravi. “You can change anything. I changed my gender.”

I had been taking a sip of water and coughed it out. “You — what?!”

“Oh, yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything for the first day to see if anyone noticed,” Ravi laughed, “but nobody did, so whatever, you know?”

“Personally,” said Leanne, another Erudite transfer, “I already knew. Your sister’s terrible at secrets. I think all of Erudite knew except your parents.”

“Worst kept secret in Chicago,” Ravi agreed. “Yeah, I’m a trans guy. Came out to my parents this morning, they were pissed, but I changed factions on them anyway, so who really wins?”

A trans guy? I knew about transgender people. I knew Candor and Amity openly encouraged them, whereas Erudite and Abnegation discouraged them. Dauntless didn’t care so long as you could fight. But I didn’t think I had ever met someone who identified as transgender. For obvious reasons, in Abnegation, the heterosexual, monogamous, childbearing family unit was the paragon of selflessness. Sacrificing personal feelings for the sake of raising a new generation. I, personally, saw no sense in changing one’s gender for any reason than to get out of having children. At least, that's what I had been taught.

“Oh,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

Ravi and Oona both looked at me. “What’s the oh?” asked Oona.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. But I should have known better than to try that at a table of brand-new Candors.

Ravi laughed breathily. “Look, I get it if you’re uncomfortable.”

“Huh?”

“Honestly, intra-faction controversy about trans people is the one thing Erudite and Abnegation has in common. But we’re not in those factions anymore, we’re in Candor, and it’s different here. So if you have any questions, I’m okay with answering — I was probably asking the same ones at some point.”

He didn’t seem hostile towards me, not like how my father and other Abnegation leaders often described encounters like this — where other factions would try to force their beliefs about personal lifestyle on us to make us change. 

But Ravi was right. This was Candor. Things were different here.  _ We  _ could be different here.

I looked at him and nodded. “Okay,” I smiled.

“It’s a learning process for all of us,” said Leanne. “But that’s what this is about, right? Opening our eyes to the light of justice? Becoming our truest selves?”

“Whatever all that means,” sniffed Lars, but he was smiling. He held up his glass for cheers, and we all laughed as we lifted our glasses as well. 

A bell rang and doors opened, ushering in a neat line of waiters and waitresses holding huge platters and bowls. The contents of the bowls were familiar. Vegetables, salads, breads. The platters, however, were foreign — circular pieces of meat wedged between round bread slices. I pinched one between my fingers, unsure what to make of it.

Ravi nudged me with his elbow.

“It’s beef,” he said. “Put this on it.” He passed me a small bowl full of red sauce.

“You’ve never had a hamburger before?” asked Oona, her eyes wide.

“No,” I said. “Is that what it’s called?”

“Stiffs eat plain food,” said Lars, his mouth full of hamburger.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Extravagance is considered self-indulgent and unnecessary.”

Ravi cackled. “No wonder you left.”

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Because of the food.”

Then I caught someone’s gaze. Ace was standing by the door, only a few feet away, and she was looking at me. Listening. When we locked eyes, she flicked her gaze away.

I tried to focus on my food, but even though it was delicious, I found it hard to stop glancing towards Ace. She was interesting to look at. Impressively tall; her powerful, muscular build tested the bounds of her leather jacket. I wondered if she dressed more professionally to blend in here, but the pride with which she carried herself was different than the pride of the Candor. A stronger pride, somehow. 

“Hey, Lars,” I said quietly, as Ace was still in earshot, “do you know anything about Ace?”

Lars turned around to look at her, attracting her attention. I ducked my head and pretended I hadn’t been looking. She just frowned, then returned to surveying the dining hall.

“Not all Dauntless know each other, Phoebe,” said Lars. I started to apologize, but then Lars laughed. “Of course I know about Ace. She’s basically a legend. First factionless to pass Dauntless initiation.”

Ravi choked on his water. Oona dropped her fork. Now Lars had the attention of the whole table. “What?” he said.

“She’s  _ factionless?”  _ Leanne hissed.

“Yeah,” Lars said.

“That’s impossible,” said Ravi. “Factionless don’t get to choose. They gotta take literacy tests, and there hasn’t been a factionless kid who’s passed in, like, ever.”

I had never hated the factionless. But I couldn’t argue with that. Kids born factionless were required to go to school, just like us, and then to take the literacy and mathematics tests when they turned sixteen. Inability to pass these tests meant not taking the aptitude test, which meant never getting to choose. It was simple meritocracy, my father and Marcus had explained to me once. If a factionless-born wanted the chance to join the factions, they would work hard in school in order to pass the tests. But they never did. It was estimated that only about five percent of factionless-born even attended school at all.

“I dunno.” Lars shrugged and began to dig into a pile of broccoli. “Yeah, she’s factionless. Happened two, three years ago, I think.”

The only thing I could think to say was, “How?”

“She passed all the literacy tests. Aced ‘em. I heard one of the Erudite teachers was so surprised, he passed out. So they called a Candor proctor down there to check for test integrity, the proctor gave an okay, and she was allowed to take the aptitude test. She chose Dauntless.”

“You’re joking,” said Oona. “There’s no way. Otherwise, why didn’t the whole city hear about it?”

Lars shrugged again. “They kept it quiet. Didn’t want to attract too much attention to her. They found some obscure rule about test confidentiality to back themselves up, so it wasn’t technically lying. Then they dressed her up as one of their own for the Choosing Ceremony, she chose Dauntless, and it didn’t come out that she used to be factionless until halfway through initiation. Candor swooped in again and confined the secret to Dauntless. We’re technically not supposed to tell anyone.”

“But you’re telling us now,” I pointed out.

“Well, you asked,” said Lars. “What am I gonna do? Lie?”

He had a point there.

“Honestly, when the news broke, we all thought it was the end of her,” continued Lars. “The other initiates, oh boy, they were  _ pissed.  _ She got beaten up pretty badly a couple times. But she kept training. Ended up top of her class and got to pick whatever job she wanted.”

“And she chose to work for Candor,” I said quietly.

Lars nodded. “She’s still a Dauntless member, but…it doesn’t feel like it sometimes. Again, people were mad at first. But it’s not like that anymore. When I hear people talk about her now, it’s sad. She could have been the next great Dauntless leader. Until some asshole initiates drove her away.”

I looked at Ace again. She had turned her head to hide the side with the crescent scar, but its shape was burned into my memory. I wondered if the scar came from a member of her own faction — her own family. There was something new to the proud strength in her shoulders, a darkness. A deep sadness.

The rest of the table returned to dinner. But every once in a while, I looked back up at Ace. More than once, she was looking right back.

After dinner, as people filed out of the dining hall, Ace said, “You — can I speak to you?”

Oh, boy. She most definitely overheard us talking about her. But I just nodded and followed Ace down a hall.

She was much taller up close. I felt small and vulnerable without the protective weight of my scarf over my head, and suddenly wished to have it to hide behind again. Yet I forced myself to meet her dark gaze. She wasn’t a dog, but the same rules applied. Looking away was submissive. Meeting the eyes was a challenge. It was my choice.

“Phoebe, is it?” asked Ace.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re the Abnegation transfer, right?”

“Yes.”

She raised her chin. There was another shallow scar there, stretching from just under her ear to the center of her neck. I wondered if that was from her fellow initiates, too.

“If you have questions about me, I would prefer you asked me first,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

“No, you’re not,” said Ace. “All you Candor are the same. Even the former Stiffs. Gossip is in your blood, and I don’t care for it.”

Gossip. That’s what we’d been doing, wasn’t it? Ace didn’t ask to have a hard life, and now we were passing it around the table to gawk and gobble at. I could respect her desire to control what was said about her. 

But I also wanted to know. I raised my chin too. 

“Was Lars telling the truth?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t actually expecting me to ask. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not Candor,” she told me. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“That’s fair,” I said. 

I don’t think she was prepared for that response either. “Okay,” she said awkwardly. “Okay. Glad we have an understanding.”

She brushed past me down the hall, shoving her hands in her pockets. I watched her leave, swipe her ID at a door that read  _ Authorized Personnel Only _ , and vanish. 

I wanted to feel like I’d won, finally having a chance to flex my curiosity. But something didn’t settle right about the conversation. It wasn’t until that night, as I lay in my bed in my silent, moonlit room, when I realized what it was. 

Candor proctor. Test integrity. _ I’m sorry, _ and _ No, you’re not.  _

Ace, the factionless legend, knew Irene, my test proctor. Perhaps Irene had even handled her case personally. Or perhaps it was just a string of coincidences. 

But deep down, I knew that the mystery of my identity had an answer in Ace. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i apologize for my absence. i threw a righteous anger fueled tantrum on the divergent amino and deleted it out of pride. i have also been busy because the “fourth of july holiday weekend” is only good news for white collar workers. i hate customers. 
> 
> in the meanwhile, take a half chapter! this chapter used to be part of the one that comes after it, but i had to split them because it would be hella long otherwise. so, ignore the awkward ending. 
> 
> i will update again on friday!

The next morning brought Sunday. I had two classes — Legal Procedure at nine and Argumentative Technique at two.

Easy-peasy, until I actually went.

I had been so anxious the night before that I barely slept for the first three hours, but I hadn’t slept much before the Choosing Ceremony, either. When I did fall asleep, I was knocked out. I was only awoken by Oona pounding on my door and asking if I had another white sock, please, because she couldn’t find one of hers.

I got her sock and then dressed in a hurry, picking the first things I saw, another long-sleeved black shirt and the same white pants from last night. I wondered if I’d ever become comfortable with showing skin above my ankles and wrists. In a moment of humor, I remembered Irene’s story — wearing one white sock and one black sock to class.

I changed out one of my white socks for a black one, using the little boots to cover it up. Maybe it would bring me luck.

When I arrived in Legal Procedure, four things made me immediately realize that luck alone wouldn’t cover it. The first thing was that it was a class of only ten people, and Oona wasn’t one of them. The second thing was that Aletheia was sitting in the front row — great. The third thing was that the professor was familiar. She was Sajida Touma’s mother, the woman in the hijab. When she saw me without my head covering, her face screwed into a frown. So I sat in the back of the classroom, next to Ravi, who had forgotten his laptop.

The fourth and worst thing was that, at breakfast, I drank milk. I had not had milk for a while, as it was considered more of a luxury food product. I enjoyed it, but now my stomach was beginning to turn very, very sour.

Judge Touma used the first fifteen minutes of class to review the syllabus, and then she jumped straight into lecture. I thought I was prepared for the kind of note-taking needed to keep up. I was sorely incorrect. In two hours, Judge Touma covered the whole history of legal theory. Even the Candor-born were typing frantically to get the information down. If I hadn’t done so well in Mid-Level keyboarding class, I would have been doomed.

By the time we broke for lunch, my wrists were numb, my head was pounding, and my gut was screaming for a bathroom. I now understood what Judge Morris had meant by wishing we hadn’t been born.

“I think I’m lactose intolerant,” I sighed as I sat down for lunch with Oona and Ravi. Lunch was rice and chicken, but all I took was the plain rice. “Either that, or the milk went bad.”

“Nope, it’s just you,” said Oona.

“If it’s any consolation,” said Ravi, “I feel sick too, after that lecture.”

“You would,” Leanne laughed. She had been in the other class, Argumentative Technique, with Oona and the other half of the initiates. 

“What, you telling me that an Erudite didn’t like a two-hour class?” asked Jed, the other Amity transfer.

Ravi groaned. “Ugh. I’m not Erudite anymore, y’all know that. I left that place to avoid two-hour classes.”

“And what’d you want to do when you got here?” asked Jed.

“Be a detective, duh,” said Ravi. “I don’t need to know about the bazillion types of civil lawsuits to do detective work.”

“Well, if you want to last through initiation, you actually do,” I pointed out.

“Please don’t be intelligent with me, Phoebe,” Ravi said.

“Ravi, if it makes you feel better,” said Leanne, “your reasoning is exactly why Erudite and Candor historically have the second most transfers between each other, besides Candor and Dauntless. If you haven’t noticed, over a third of the transfers here are from Erudite. And if we could ask the current Erudite class, I’d bet that a third of their transfers are from Candor.”

“Really?” I asked. Leanne was right; there were two other Erudite transfers sitting at another table with the four other Dauntless. 

She nodded. “Yup. There’s an argument to be made about similarity in moral values, but I think a large part of it is just the science-liberal arts dichotomy. A lot of Candor kids get sick of reading and talking, and a lot of Erudite kids get sick of math and science.”

“Case in point,” said Ravi, pointing his thumbs at himself. 

“Same,” said Leanne.

It made sense. Erudite and Candor had their differences, and those differences often manifested in furious back-and-forth ethical debate and inter-faction hatred, but when it came to us kids, sometimes the most important thing on our mind was getting away from something as simple as mathematics. 

That was why Abnegation had so few transfers going out. Generally. We had everything a person could ever want, really, at the basic level. Guaranteed shelter, family, and community. No one ever failed out of Abnegation initiation. For generations, Abnegation kids had stayed among their own, a comfortable life earned by little more than community service every once in a while, nothing to escape and nothing to run to.

“What I’m curious about,” said Leanne, nudging Oona with her elbow, “are the two hippies over here. I thought Amity and Candor hated each other.”

Jed and Oona exchanged a look. “Pretty much,” said Jed. “Candor thinks we’re all liars, really, because we’ll do anything to keep the peace. But I never felt like that.”

“Me neither,” said Oona. “Honestly, I always knew that I was going to transfer here. Since, um, my dad’s Candor, but my mom’s Amity. It’s a long story.”

Around the table, eyebrows flew up. Inter-faction relationships weren’t legally forbidden, but each faction had their own ways of dealing with them, and none of them were supportive. They were basically unheard of. Nobody wanted that sort of scandal, especially since genetic science made it so easy to track down both parents. So they just didn’t happen.

“No way,” Ravi said.

“You  _ never  _ told me that,” said Jed.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

Oona nodded. “Get one of the Candor-born over here if you think I’m lying.”

“Don’t just leave us hanging, sis, spill the tea,” said Leanne.

She was blushing, but laughed. “Alright. My parents dated in Upper Levels; they were both Candor and planned to stay together. Then, the morning of the Choosing Ceremony, my mom found out she was pregnant, so she chose to transfer to Amity to raise me. But my dad had chosen before her and it was too late to change. They’ve stayed on good terms, since he understood that if my mom kept me, it would’ve made law school pretty hard. Really, we’ve always been a Candor family, just split up. They let us visit every few months.”

“You can do that? That’s legal?” Ravi asked.

“The legality of my birth faction is a little messy to begin with,” said Oona.

“Whoa,” Lars murmured.

“What about your mom?” I asked. “She’s still in Amity?”

Oona nodded. “Yeah. But she’s got a new husband, who came with a bunch of stepkids, so she’s the last thing from lonely.”

She shrugged it off, but something about the story still made me sad. I thought of my parents, sitting alone at a table built for four. They weren’t so lucky as Oona’s mother. I thought again, suddenly, of Sajida, and I wondered if my parents took her in. Abnegation families often “adopted” the few transfers to our faction. I had left behind all the grey head scarves and full-cover clothing that Sajida would ever need.

We finished lunch and had another hour before our next class, which I used to go back to my apartment and suffer through the effects of the morning milk. Then I hurried to Argumentative Technique. 

This course was held in a beautiful mock courtroom and taught by Judge Bandele, a tall black man who somehow struck me as one of the most well-dressed people I had seen so far, sporting a silky jacket with a strange floral pattern across it. The course itself was unlike anything I had ever experienced so far. We sat in the gallery while Judge Bandele sat, appropriately, in the judge’s box above us. He assigned each of us a partner, then told us to ask our partner a list of basic questions. Name, pronouns, former faction, career ideas, rationale for career ideas, fun facts about self. We were paired just so that we were all with someone we didn’t know as well — Candor-born were paired with transfers, and the leftover two transfers were from different factions. I prayed very hard that I would not get paired with Aletheia and got lucky. Ravi got Aletheia. I got a bespectacled Candor-born named Sherlock. 

Unlike Aletheia and Katie, Sherlock was nice, and I enjoyed getting to know him. His ancestors were from someplace called Italy. He was named after a detective from an old book. Unlike his namesake, he wanted to be a defense attorney, as he had a soft spot for cases where the criminal might have sympathetic motives for doing a crime, such as factionless parents who stole to feed their children. I disagreed with him there, and we very nearly launched into a debate about theft and morality, but I respected his opinion. 

I couldn’t think of many answers, as I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do with my career in Candor, but I told him that I was still doing research on all of the possibilities before I set my mind on anything. I also didn’t have much for the fun facts, so I just told him about my red hair and having to cover it up in Abnegation. 

It was a simple, enjoyable icebreaker and I came away from it with a new friend, but that’s all I thought it was. Then, when the room quieted down, Judge Bandele told us to walk up to the floor, one by one, and introduce our partner to the class. Our partner would then say how correct our introduction was. 

I have never seen a group of Candor-born look more terrified than in that moment.

I was also a little nervous to speak before so many people, something that I hadn’t done since Upper Levels English class, but I realized very quickly that I was not the person who needed to worry. I had been trained my whole life to get to know people. I recounted every detail of what Sherlock had told me without hesitation. An Erudite girl named Alyss did similarly well, but most of the class stumbled through the short speech. Aletheia was among the worst. She got Ravi’s pronouns wrong and accidentally mispronounced his last name, Balakrishnan, as something very similar to “Ballsack”, which entertained Ravi  _ immensely. _

After the last initiate finished mumbling through her speech, Judge Bandele stood up and walked across the floor. He stopped in the center and folded his hands.

“The first pillar of arguing,” he said, “is the practice of listening.” 

He met my eyes. I didn’t look away. He inclined his chin, then continued on with the lesson.

I think I could get used to this.

The rest of the lesson was straightforward, mostly discussing note-taking strategies and other listening exercises. I focused the best I could, but I couldn’t help but sneak small glances over towards Aletheia in the front. Every time Judge Bandele condemned the evils of constructing one’s own speech before listening to the opposing counsel’s, Aletheia’s rosy pink cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red. Spite was a vice in which I had never been able to indulge before. It was a satisfying vice, indeed.

A study period, then dinner followed Argumentative Technique. Even though I had done nothing but sit and take notes for two classes, I was so tired. I wasn’t alone. The gossip from lunch and last night’s dinner was subdued now, most people just focusing on the exhausting task of bringing the ravioli to their mouths.

I looked around for Ace, but she was nowhere to be seen. At her normal spot by the door was a different Dauntless soldier. She hadn’t been here all day, actually, which I found odd. I didn’t think I had made her so uncomfortable that she quit her job...but the thought was still there.

I wanted to ask the new soldier where Ace was. In the back of my mind, I was still unsettled. I was here in Candor for a reason, I wanted to find Irene and find out what was so frightening about my aptitude test that she deleted the answers. 

But I was also very tired. I still needed to review my notes tonight. My body ached from its less-than-pleasant encounter with dairy. And I had done more talking in two hours of Argumentative Technique than I did on a single day in Abnegation.

I decided that Ace could wait. When the dining hall cleared out, I went. I returned to my apartment. I avoided Aletheia. I told Oona that I was tired. And I fell right asleep in my clothes without even pulling my covers up over me. 

* * *

I wish I could say that, the next morning, I got up bright and early and prepared to solve my mystery with a new outlook.

I wish I wasn’t so good at lying to myself.

The next day wasn’t much different. I was pulled out of bed by an alarm, I slogged through my morning routine, and I dragged myself to my first course of the day, Logical and Analytical Reasoning. Also known as “Math with a Fancy Name”.

It was taught by a perkish Candor woman who required us call her by her first name, Stacey. Stacey was a character. She made a lot of jokes that were funny to only her. She used every opportunity to call us “kiddies”. She was uncomfortably familiar with Ravi, who whispered to me that Stacey taught at an inter-faction summer camp for kids with behavioral disorders, which Ravi had multiple of. When I asked him about her as a teacher, he just smiled devilishly and said, “I find the experience easier if you go into it with a positive attitude, and I don’t have anything positive to say.” I found this unnecessarily sinister. I just tried to focus on the basic logic concepts Stacey was guiding us through.

Ace was at lunch. She hadn’t been at breakfast. But I didn’t get to talk to her because I was trying to help Lars differentiate between types of proofs.

Investigative Techniques was possibly the most interesting of the four classes. It was taught by Judge Morris, the man who had welcomed us to Candor on Saturday. The syllabus had the dates of our assessments on them, but in the details column, it just said “Be Prepared.” We had our first lesson in the open-air courtyard with the trees, sitting at stone desks and benches clustered around a small stage. 

Like Judge Bandele, Morris started us out with an exercise, making us close our eyes. Then, using electronic clickers, we had to answer true or false questions about the environment and peers. It was an observance game, Morris explained — the keenest Candor was the one who could remove themself from their own psyche, a single fixed point, instead using all senses to take in all possibilities and all viewpoints. Things got deep very fast. I almost got whiplash, as part of my sleepy brain was still wondering how I had forgotten the color of my own shirt. (White. I think.)

And then it was dinner and wrestling with myself about talking to Ace and then falling right asleep again.

And then waking up the next morning, going to Legal Procedure and Arguments again, and going to bed again.

And then came the next day with Logic and Investigations again.

And Legal Procedure and Arguments.

And Logic and Investigations.

Around and around and around I went, a brilliant whirlwind, no rest to be found.


	9. Chapter 9

I could never decide whether that first week was the longest or the shortest ever in my life. But finally, Saturday was here, and I slept in until a glorious eleven.

When I did awake, it was to the sound of conversation in the apartment beyond. A lot of conversation. So far, the apartment had been peaceful. Oona and I shared a bathroom; Aletheia and Kate shared the other, and we kept to ourselves. Which I appreciated. But which now led me to beg the question: who was in my house?

Rubbing my eyes, I left my room in my loose pajama dress and walked out to the common area. Then my jaw dropped. The apartment was full to bursting with Candor-born initiates — all eight of them, actually. Which wasn’t a lot. But the apartment was small. So it was pretty full.

I’d walked right into a business casual brunch. The five boys were lounging around the TV and the three girls leaned against the bar in the kitchen. Everyone had a plate with bite-sized sandwiches and fruit cut in fun shapes. And they were all smoking like they were applying for jobs as fog machines. I burst into a coughing fit and they all turned to look at me.

“Oh, hey, Phoebe!” said Sherlock brightly.“Guys, it’s Phoebe.” The rest of the guys cheered. Initially, I was frozen with fear, because I wasn’t wearing anything but my pajamas, but they didn’t seem to care much. I relaxed and waved sheepishly.

“What are you doing here?” Aletheia asked, like she was shocked. I raised an eyebrow.

“This is my apartment,” I said neutrally. “What are  _ you  _ doing here?”

“Good one,” said one of the boys.

“Brighton, shut up,” said Aletheia. Her blue eyes narrowed at me. “I’ll have you know that this is called brunch. It’s a social thing that people with friends do.”

“Oh, do inform me,” I said.

“After this, we’re going to go out to see a show, and then we’re going to come back and socialize. So please — stay out of our way, alright?”

“What — Allieee!” Sherlock whined. “Phoebe’s cool! Don’t be like that.”

Aletheia whirled around.

“I thought this was our day, Sher,” she pouted. “Isn’t that what we all agreed on? Just Candor-borns? You don’t want me to go back on my promise, do you?”

Sherlock visibly quailed, then took a drag from his cigarette. “Uh...I dunno? Whatever, uh, whatever you want.”

Aletheia smiled. “Thanks, sweetie.” She looked at the other boys. “Anyone else want to change the plan?”

Nobody responded to that. Aletheia’s smile grew bigger, and she turned back to me.

“See?” she said. “This is a Candor-only party. Stiffs aren’t allowed.”

“I never said I wanted to attend,” I said. If there’s anything Abnegation taught me, it was how to keep my voice completely even and my face totally deadpan, even if someone was pissing me off. I kept my gaze locked on hers as I walked by, took a mini sandwich, and turned back to my room. 

“Put on a bra,” Aletheia sneered at my back. 

On impulse, I lifted my hand and raised one finger. The living room erupted into a chorus of  _ “OOOOHHHH” _ s. I slammed my bedroom door behind me.

I sat on my bed with my sandwich, trembling with adrenaline. I had never said a bad word in my life, much less given such an obscene gesture. It would be unthinkable, in Abnegation. Expressions of anger were always selfish. Insults, always selfish. Swearing, always selfish. They were meant to build the self up at the expense of others. I had to become good at feigning calm. There had been too many occasions when Caleb or my father had to yank my wrist and drag me home for losing it — though number of those times was miniscule compared to the number of times I had bowed my head, counted to ten, and bit the inside of my cheek until it filled my mouth with blood. And whether I lost my temper or held it, I always felt shame. It was welling up again. Welling up like tears in my eyes. 

But only for a moment. My eyes rested on my new watch, the one with the black band and silver face. Mirrored. I saw my flaming red hair. A constant reminder I was somewhere else now, somewhere I was expected to be the opposite of how I had been raised. Not to behave according to a community’s set of standards — but to behave according to mine. My own standards. My own emotions. My own opinions. What I thought, I had the right to express. And for the first time, it clicked: it wasn’t shame I felt. 

It was freedom. 

I ate my sandwich, tried to study, and failed. I was too excited. I wanted to really milk this brutal honesty thing now. I almost wanted to go out into the living room and tell Aletheia exactly what I thought of her and why — although I didn’t, because I didn’t want Sherlock and the boys to call security. When I peeked through the bathroom to Oona’s room, she was not there. It was just me and the party in the living room. I found myself sitting in the little window-seat, staring out at the Merciless Mart plaza.

It was lunchtime. All of the courtrooms were in recess. Six stories below my feet, Candor milled about the plaza, eating their lunches and enjoying the summer sun. I knew from Legal Procedure that most trials occurred during the standard Monday to Friday workweek, but often on Saturdays and Sundays, Year 3 law students — we called them 3Ls — would conduct the trials of unimportant clients. And the Integrity Offices were open seven days a week.

In many ways, Candor’s work was as thankless as the factionless’. I had begun to learn that the Candor, particularly the Integrity Offices, were as active in every branch of government as Abnegation. We were the proofreaders, the facilitators of inter-faction activity, the final line of defense. Every time two parties had a conflict, a Candor would be called in to mediate, set all the facts on the table, and help both sides come to an agreement. When Amity delivered their trains of food to the city, Candor would check the inventory to make sure the numbers were right. When Dauntless disciplined violence in the projects, Candor would ensure that the soldiers were not misusing their weapons and power. When Erudite hired teachers to the schools, Candor would comb the teacher’s background and intentions for anything that might pose a risk to the students. And when Abnegation discussed the next political project, Candor would hold any deceptive word accountable.

The last one always made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like to think that an Abnegation council member would ever try to deceive anyone. Deception was always for selfish gain. That was the one thing Candor and Abnegation could agree upon. But apparently, their opinions diverged at whether or not Abnegation could be trusted.

I bit my lip and focused on watching the Candor. I followed a woman in a huge, floppy white hat for a while. I wondered what I would do with my day other than watch lawyers snack and walk their dogs. I was still tired, and in the warm soft light through my window, I began to doze off again, my eyes trailing after a group of young Candor and a Dauntless soldier.

I snapped awake. 

It was Ace, escorting a few 3L students out of the Merciless Mart. The 3Ls seemed to be in high spirits and were congratulating a girl in the center, so I could only assume she had won her trial. Whatever, though. Ace was  _ right there,  _ and I wasn’t tired anymore, and I had a whole day ahead of me to do whatever stupid thing was on my mind.

I dressed so quickly that I almost left with the buttons of my white button-down off by one, then bounded out of my room and through the party. Aletheia didn’t even have time to give me a snide comment. The elevators were slow. I raced down the stairs. 

When I reached the lobby, I almost expected to see Ace and the 3Ls to be just returning, but I wasn’t as fast as I thought I’d been. The place was empty except a student poring over a few files at a table. 

“Did you see a Dauntless guard and some 3Ls come through lately?” I asked. He looked up with bloodshot eyes.

“I’ll tell you if you get me another cup,” he muttered.

That was the other thing about Candors that I had recently learned. Yes, they always told the truth. But it rarely came without stipulations.

I did as he asked and got another “cup” — an iced double-shot espresso in a can, dispensed from a vending machine on the other side of the lobby. He cracked it open, chugged half of it in one breath, and pointed me down a hallway. I thanked him and wished him luck on whatever he was studying furiously for. Then I raced off.

It’s embarrassing how long it took me to find Ace. It’s equally embarrassing that I didn’t find her; rather, we bumped into each other.

 I wandered every first floor hall of the Candor Institute of Law and the only traces I found of Ace’s whereabouts were a couple of the 3Ls she had been with before, but they couldn’t say where she had gone. I went so far as to wait outside the  _ Authorized Personnel Only  _ door for a while, but she didn’t come out of there. 

After a while I gave up, got some snacks from the vending machine, and decided to do something else. I hadn’t done much exploring of the Institute. Now I had the time  _ and _ the freedom. 

I wandered more. I found empty classrooms and searched for lost pens to put in my chest pocket. I found the mock courtrooms and sat in different locations, pretending to be lawyer, judge, and defendant alike. I found an abandoned dusty library and climbed all of the ladders. I took the elevator to the very top of the apartment complex, then climbed a few stairs to the roof. 

I knew we weren’t allowed on the roof. That was one of the many rules in our housing contracts. But I was forming a habit of not really caring where I was allowed to be. The door to the roof had a red sign reading “NO TRESPASSING” and was locked, but I had found a few paperclips on the ground, so whatever. It helped that paperclips were infinitely easier lockpicks than scarf pins.

I got the door open easily and propped it open with a brick. Then I faced the wind. There wasn’t much up here on the roof. The apartment complex was ten stories high, dwarfed in the shadow of the Merciless Mart, but still one of the tallest buildings I had ever been to the roof of. I had never minded heights. The strong wind didn’t faze me at all; the concrete wall around the perimeter of the roof was up to my chest and I knew I couldn’t fall over.

There wasn’t much to see up here, just a few piles of rubbish and construction materials. An old bench that, if you sat on it, would give you an excellent view of that concrete wall. I stood at the wall and leaned over as far as I could, looking down again at the plaza. Someone was walking a dog. Or maybe a cat. I was too high up to tell. 

“Dauntless police! Hands up; back away from the wall!”

I whirled around. There was a gun pointed at me. My hands flew up over my head — in obedience, yes, but also protection — and I scrambled back. Then I looked past the gun.

“Ace?” I said.

She lowered the gun slightly, but didn’t put it away. “You,” she scowled. “What are you doing up here?”

“Breaking rules, I think,” I said. “What are  _ you  _ doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound so indolent. Adrenaline just made me like that.

Ace’s scowl just grew deeper. “None of your business,” she said. “Now tell me why you’re really up here, or I’ll take you to Morris and have him get it out of you.”

I glanced down to her jacket pocket. The corner of a brown paper bag peeked out. 

“Same reason as you,” I said. “Wanted to get away for a bit.”

Her eyes narrowed. Then she put the gun in its holster.

“Keep talking,” she said, sitting on the bench. I hesitated before sitting next to her. She pulled out her lunch, consisting of a flatbread sandwich, carrots, and some apple slices. “You’ve been looking for something for an hour. I’m assuming it’s me, because you seem satisfied.”

“It was,” I said. 

“Not even gonna ask how you got up here.”

“I can pick locks.”

“What kind of Stiff family teaches their kid to pick locks?”

“The strict kind, actually.”

“Figures.”

“I need to ask you something.”

She said nothing and began to eat. 

“Do you know a Candor test proctor named Irene?” I asked. 

She swallowed. “No shop talk,” she said. “I’m on break.”

“Wait — what?”

“Is that not obvious? I’m off the clock, I don’t want to answer work-related questions.” 

I had a feeling that Ace would be a frustrating person to get to know. “Well, what counts as a work-related question?”

“Questions that have to do with you Candor.”

“Can I ask about the Dauntless?”

She frowned. It seemed to be one of her favorite things to do. “Fine.”

“Every morning at the Upper Levels building, I saw you get off the train with the Dauntless kids,” I said. 

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

Now she gave me a very strange look. “Do you typically watch the Dauntless train?”

“I have this thing with myself where if someone lands wrong and breaks a bone, I run down to help them and then I get to miss my first few classes,” I told her. It was only partially a joke. 

She laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. Are you always this funny?”

“You didn’t answer me,” I told her.

The smile vanished. “Am I on trial now, Counsel?”

“Well, I didn’t think bravery was restricted to, you know, shooting guns and jumping off things.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Ace, please, I want to know.”

She looked away. Then she sighed. “I take a morning class. Just one civics course. I — never got to take it before, and my employers thought that knowing the justice system might help me do my job.”

So she really had been factionless. I averted my eyes too, staring at the wall. A time ago, someone had scratched letters into the concrete —  _ FML.  _ I wondered if they were initials. Or maybe something else. 

“Sometimes I do wish I had chosen to train Dauntless initiates,” Ace murmured. “That’s the only part of the day I look forward to. Flying with them off that train. Everything’s so simple to Dauntless kids.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

Ace didn’t respond, just rubbed her forehead. Then she said, “Because normally Dauntless initiates are the ones who like to trespass, and I don’t like being that kind of babysitter.”

Like everything she said, it was an unfriendly answer, but I caught a mischievous gleam in her eye. I beamed at her. She scowled deeper. 

“There’s nothing wrong with having to take an Upper Level course,” I shrugged. “It means you’re working to better yourself. That’s worthy of respect.”

“Sure,” she scoffed, clearly not believing it. But I wasn’t going to push it. So I let it go.

She finished her lunch, crumpled the bag, and shoved it in her pocket. “Can I ask you shop talk now?” I asked.

“No,” she said, standing.

“Why not?”

“You need to get off the roof.”

I followed her. “If I get off the roof, can you tell me how you know Irene?”

“Who said I knew her at all?” Ace turned to face me. Again, I was struck by how tall she was — terribly strong, like the Amazon warriors of old myths. For a moment, I cowered, unable to speak. “That’s an assumption.”

A rock began to form in my stomach. She was right. It was a crazy assumption. Gut instinct, mostly. I had no proof that Ace knew Irene at all except scraps of evidence that could mean nothing at all. I tried to rack my brain for something that had previously escaped me, but came up blank. Ace smirked, clearly seeing something funny in the look on my face.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

“You never said you don’t know her,” I tried.

“This isn’t a court of law, Miss Prior, and you’re not a lawyer,” said Ace. “But in case you’re still curious — ” and she bent down, resting her hands on her knees, so we were eye to eye “ — I don’t know Irene.”

I knew that she knew what I was doing. In the first week of Investigation training, Morris had already started us out with the basics of lie detection. The first principle was to familiarize yourself with the subject’s body language when you knew they were telling the truth. I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of Ace’s. Typically, she was an unusual blend of relaxed and wired at the same time, with casual posture and body language, but alertness in the eyes and an indicative tension in the hands, shoulders, and legs. I looked for a deviation from what I knew. Any sort of extra fidgeting, blinking, sweat, tension in the facial muscles, or overlong stares. 

But there was nothing. It was just Ace. I had never seen her face so up close before — the scar was truly terrible, an old burn that was deepest and most severe around the perimeter, but scattered across her face with uneven pink splotches. I couldn’t help but wonder what had caused it.

She stood straight. She walked back to the door, leaving me to tag along helplessly in her wake. She held the door open for me, and once I was inside, she turned and locked it.

Then she pulled a little black book out of her breast pocket and wrote something. “Install… better… locks… on… roof,” she said, then looked at me. 

“For now,” she said, “nobody hears about this. But if you bug me again, you bet that Morris will know you as the lockpicking Stiff.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. 

We went downstairs and stopped at the elevator. Ace pressed the button for me, I got on, and she stayed outside as if to make sure the doors closed behind me. As they did, I frowned, then smiled wryly. 

“The lockpicking Stiff. Got a nice ring to it,” I said. 

“That’s not the takeaway from this conversation,” Ace snapped, but it was too late. The doors closed and I was out of her reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like Ace.


	10. Chapter 10

I spent that afternoon in the library with my laptop. I had a few assignments due Sunday, but I had no intention of doing them yet.

In a new document I had two sections:

 _ Reasons why I think Ace MIGHT know Irene. _ 

  * __Ace was factionless. Ace is currently taking basic civics, a class that all faction-born students have to take, so Lars’ rumors must be true. - > __ _Therefore, her ability to pass the literacy tests and be eligible for the aptitude test is incredibly unusual._


  * _Irene told the other Candor proctor that she had been administering aptitude tests for a long time. - > _ _Therefore, it is likely that Irene was also head of the aptitude test integrity board two or three years ago, when Ace took her test._


  * _Mom said that Irene’s position allows her to see all of the aptitude results, as she checks the tests for tampering or unusual behavior. - > _ _Therefore, Irene would have undoubtedly become involved in a case of a factionless kid passing the literacy test._


  * _When I initially asked Ace about Irene, Ace didn’t even ask who Irene was before telling me her “no shop talk” policy. She didn’t even ask why I wanted to know. Afterwards, she just got defensive and kept asserting that she didn’t know Irene. - > _ _I don’t even know what to make of this. I think I did say “Candor test proctor” and Ace’s policy extended to all Candor, so she didn’t even need to know who Irene was to put her under the umbrella, just that she was Candor._


  * _Ace could have had any job in Dauntless. What about “guard for the Candor” is at all attractive to someone like her? - > _ _Even if she was trying to get away from people who bullied her during initiation, she could have worked for any other faction. She could have even guarded the fence; that’s a solitary position. She openly shows distaste for Candor at every opportunity. - > _ _Therefore, she has to be here for something. Or someone. - > __If it’s true, I guess we’re similar in that regard._


  * _“No, you’re not.” - > _ _Coincidence? Maybe. I don’t know._



_Reasons why I think Ace MIGHT NOT know Irene._

  * __There may be multiple Candor associates working on the test integrity board. Or perhaps Irene was administering tests for a while, but was more recently selected to be head of the board. - > __ _Therefore, I can’t say specifically that Irene administered Ace’s test or viewed her results._


  * _All of this evidence is circumstantial. There’s no real proof. - > _ _I can’t see anything but this explanation, but someone less biased might be able to create an entirely different story out of the evidence. And it might be closer to the truth._


  * _I do not know if Ace was lying. - > _ _I don’t know anything about Ace at all._



 

The last bullet point was most perplexing to me. Out of all the strange people I had met here in Candor, I had fixated on a Dauntless. A factionless. And yet I’d learned almost nothing about her at all. Everyone here was such an open book about who they were and what they wanted us to learn, but Ace managed to stand out by saying nothing at all. 

On a certain level, it was reassuring — Judge Bandele, during Argumentative Technique, had said that one of the telling characteristics of a good Candor was the inability to let a mystery rest, and both Ace and Irene validated me there. At the very least, if I couldn’t succeed in Candor in other areas, nothing could dampen my irritating need to know the answer to everything. But it was still _irritating_ above all else. 

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. What was the point anymore? Was there really no other way to find Irene and talk to her than through Ace? The laptops that we had came equipped with a staff directory of the Institute. I searched Irene’s name there, but found nothing. Of course, because she didn’t work here. 

I avoided surfing the internet for her. Candor computers came with an annoying feature that didn’t let you delete your browser history. And I couldn’t stop thinking about _“What you saw would get both of us killed”._

I looked around, at the aisles and aisles of hardcover books and data disks that spanned as far as my eye could see. The Candor Library of Law contained every court transcript, brief, and ruling ever created. Irene would undoubtedly be somewhere in here. But I had no idea how to access any of the information. At the initiate level, all of our case files were hand-picked and distributed by the professors. There were librarians around, of course, but what would I say? “Hi, I’m looking for information about a Candor woman. Do you guys have a phone book? No, I only know her first name. Well, ideally, I’d like to know if she has office hours where I could speak to her, but I’d settle for more or less stalking her. I’m also wondering how much information you have on the simulation serum from the aptitude tests?”

No. This was a mystery I had to solve on my own.

After finishing my other assignments, I left the library and returned to the apartment complex. It took me almost no time to find who I was looking for. On my floor, there were sixteen girls divided in groups of four, mostly initiates, but some 1Ls in other blocks. The boys’ floor was underneath ours and had a similar layout. Four blocks of four boys. Like the girls’, the boys’ doors had neat, professional little signs with their names on them. 

I found the right one very quickly. One of the signs used to say “Ravi Balakrishnan”, but a mischievous hand had written “Ballsack, he/him/his” on a sticky note and covered up the last name. A reference to the disastrous first Arguments class, where Aletheia had gotten Ravi’s surname and pronouns wrong. I sighed and knocked.

“It’s open!” a voice hollered.

I pushed it open, but then was met with a scene even more alarming than the smoking party in my living room. Two of Ravi’s roommates, Brighton and Sherlock, were absent, since they were Candor-born and probably still out with Aletheia. His other roommate, Lars from Dauntless, was sitting with him on the couch, and they were both holding video game controllers. Zac and Altagracia, two of the other Dauntless transfers, were also crowded on the couch. Oona was on the floor with a grey cat in her lap. And the whole room was trashed. Snack food and cellophane wrappers were everywhere.

“Hey, Pheebs,” said Ravi, not looking away from the TV. He and Lars were playing a very, very violent video game. Blood splattered across the screen. I cringed.

“What happened in here?” I asked.

“The Dauntless kids introduced him to terrible video games,” said Oona. “Also, Brighton has a cat.”

“They’re not terrible,” said Altagracia. “It’s just a first-person shooter.”

“Where you _kill people,”_ Oona scowled.

“Yo, Loony, your Amity is showing,” said Ravi.

I stepped over a pile of laundry in the doorway. “Great, great. Do you guys not get housekeeping?”

“Oh, no, she just came yesterday,” said Lars.

“You’ve gotta be joking.”

On the screen, more blood appeared. Ravi said a very interesting swear word and gave the controller to Altagracia.

“Come on in, have a sit,” he told me, scooting over on the couch.

I frowned. “I’d rather not,” I said. “Ravi, I need to talk to you. In private.”

“Oh my god,” said Zac. “Ravi got Phoebe pregnant.”

“What?!” I flinched.

“Can a trans guy really get a girl pregnant?” Lars asked. 

Altagracia hit him on the back of the head, causing his character on the screen to die a painful death. “You’re literally so stupid,” she said.

“I’m serious,” said Lars.

“That’s why you’re so stupid,” said Altagracia.

“Cut it out, guys,” said Ravi, rolling his eyes. He climbed over the couch and stood straight, stretching his arms above his head. “C’mon, I’ll take you to my room.”

“Oooh, it’s gonna get steamy,” said Zac.

“Zac, you’re stupid too,” said Altagracia.

My face was red hot by the time Ravi led me to his bedroom and closed the door behind us. I knew that Dauntless were unnecessarily suggestive about everything, but I had never before been the subject of that kind of teasing. 

I tried to change the mental subject by looking around Ravi’s room. It was as messy as the living room, but there was something new I hadn’t seen anywhere before — a large flag with pastel pink, blue, and white stripes. Candor weren’t much for colorful wall decor, so it must have been Ravi’s.

“That’s the trans flag,” said Ravi. “Got it yesterday, same time as I got my binder.”

I looked at him. “Huh?”

He pointed down. Under a wrinkled, unbuttoned white shirt, he was wearing a black tank top. I hadn’t paid it much notice until now. 

“Chest binder,” he explained. “Safer than those bandages that made me pass out.”

Right. Wednesday Investigations. Ravi used to always talk with big breaths, like he had just finished running really fast. I thought it was just his thing, like how some people stuttered or said “um” a lot. But last Wednesday, during Investigations, he passed out in his chair and hit the floor cold. He was rushed to the infirmary — where they found bandages wrapped tightly around his chest.

It was called “binding”, he’d told me later — a homemade solution to something called gender dysphoria. It was like waking up in someone else’s body and being told you couldn’t go back. Logically, one would try to make the other person’s body feel as similar to the old one as possible to feel sane again, so that’s what Ravi did with the bandages. Apparently, though, binding with bandages was not the best solution. Ravi had spent a night recovering in the infirmary. 

He was a quick healer, though, and was right back to class the next morning. Last night he had gone back for a checkup, so he must have gotten the binder and flag at the same time. 

“You said I could ask you any questions I wanted,” I said. “Can I ask some now?”

“Is this the private thing?”

“No, this is a side conversation, because I’m really confused.”

“Okay, shoot.” He lounged out on his unmade bed and I sat down in his desk chair.

“Why is Candor so accepting of transgenders?” I asked. “I just don’t get it. Why they’d accept it but Erudite doesn’t.”

Ravi nodded. “No, that’s a good question. When I lived in Erudite, I was always told that I couldn’t put my personal feelings over the data. I was born with a female body and have double X chromosomes, therefore, I am female.”

“Okay.”

“Of course, you also have intersex people, who might have a chromosomal abnormality like XXY or single X, or where their chromosomes don’t match their body, and sometimes they’re allowed to change their gender. But they’re outliers. They shouldn’t dictate the rule of the norm.”

Made sense. That was how I was raised to think, too.

“Candor sees it differently,” Ravi continued. “Their question is this: is there really such thing as a ‘truly female brain’ or a ‘truly male brain’? To Candor, thoughts and feelings aren’t just synaptic chemical responses, they’re a real part of who you are. The self isn’t just the body. The self is a mind governing a body. So why define the mind by the body? My mind says I’m male. If I pretend that I’m not, is it untruthful?”

I thought about that for a while. “The mind can be wrong,” I pointed out.

Ravi shrugged. “Maybe. If it’s wrong, then I just change to what’s right. But I can’t find the right change unless I have the freedom to change in the first place.”

“I guess.”

“I think that’s why Candor makes so much sense to me. It’s not so much ‘truth is absolute and we have all the answers to it’, like people think we think. That’s actually more like Erudite. But here, it’s more — I dunno — ‘truth isn’t always what it looks like on the outside. So…go find it for yourself.’ ”

I looked at my hands. _Go find it for yourself._

“That’s actually the other thing I wanted to ask you,” I said. “I need advice.”

Ravi raised his eyebrows. “Words never said to me.”

“First for everything.” I hesitated, then said, “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I know that someone’s breaking a law to hide a secret. If I did something less-than-legal to uncover it again, would I be right?”

“You’re asking if two wrongs make a right?” said Ravi.

I cringed. “Well, once you put it like that — ”

“Yeah,” he said. “Ends justify the means, if the end is truth. Hah, I can see why you asked me and not Oona.”

Relief washed over me. Of course Ravi would understand. Now came the real sinker question.

“Great,” I said. “Now — how would you feel about helping me do the less-than-legal thing, and not asking any questions?”

The light that dawned on Ravi’s face could have powered the whole city.

* * *

On Monday, during lunch, while sitting right in front of Ace, Ravi leaned back in his chair and flipped an entire tureen of soup. He flailed, then screamed, then crashed to the ground in a glorious display of chicken noodle.

Just as I predicted, Ace rushed to help him up, then bundled him away to get a change of clothes. Our whole table laughed at him. Factionless servers swarmed in to clean up the mess. 

And twenty minutes later, I returned to my room and found Ravi alone and in a fresh pair of clothes, waiting outside the door. We stepped inside. I made sure the apartment was truly empty. He reached into his pocket and proudly pulled out Ace’s little black journal. 

“No questions asked,” he said.

“Thank you,” I told him.

“But you do owe me one. I have a hard time picking locks and I need a good teacher.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What makes you think I can pick locks?”

“When you opened your paperclip box this morning in Reasoning,” said Ravi. “Couple of the ends were in rake shapes.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Nice catch.”

“So...you’ll teach me?”

“Why not. Sure.”

“Cool beans. Oh, there’s Investigations homework, just got posted last night.”

“Is it another video of Morris talking about one of his cases again?”

“Wow, how’d you guess? Just kidding. It’s that every time. Get with the program, Fifi.”

He punched me on the shoulder and I punched him back, grinning. A slight ache pulsed in my chest when I looked at him — he really did remind me of Caleb, if Caleb was a transgender Indian boy who knew what fun was. I missed Caleb so much sometimes. Ravi helped me deal with it.

Saluting, he turned and left. I sat down on the couch and held Ace’s book in my hands.

The battered front cover read _Weekly Planner, 21XX._ A small pen fit into a pocket on the spine. When I opened to the front page, it read _Return to Ace of Dauntless, Block 248, Dauntless Compound._ Huh. Guess Ace really was her full name —

Someone knocked on the door. Must’ve been Ravi again. Maybe he had something else to say about the Investigations homework. I stood and opened the door.

And found myself face to face with Ace of Dauntless.

“Oh, uh, heeeey,” I squeaked. I hid the book behind my back, but I was pretty sure she’d already seen it. I forced a weak grin.

Her arms were folded. She looked very unamused. “Phoebe Prior.”

“That’s my name — ACK!” 

The yelp came when Ace grabbed my arm. Without breaking eye contact, she plucked the book out of my hand, yanked me inside the room, and slammed the door behind us.

“Start talking,” she snarled.

When she released my arm, I rubbed it. There were definitely going to be bruises. “Oh, that? Ha, uh, Ravi found it when you helped him, and he gave it to me to give back to you — ”

“You’re really going to lie?”

I threw my hands in the air. “Okay! Fine! I was trying to find why you’re not telling me about Irene!”

Ace rubbed her forehead, muttering a swear word. “Why can’t you just let that go already?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Because I feel like I’m losing my mind!” A tear slipped from my eye. Growling in frustration, I collapsed onto the couch and buried my face in my hands. “I thought Irene could help me with the — the problem I’m having, but maybe I’m just crazy!”

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. This was the end of the line, I knew it. I would get myself and Ravi kicked out of Candor for this stunt. What was the point of even trying to find Irene anymore when I didn’t have a faction? I was stupid, I was so stupid, thinking I could get away with something like this...

“Oh my god,” Ace grumbled. “Stop crying. I’ll take you to Irene.”

I shot to my feet. “Really?!”

She flinched back at how fast my mood improved, but composed herself and looked anywhere but me. “Yes, really,” she said. “She’s in the office until six, I’ll take you after Investigations. But you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

“I swear it,” I grinned. 

“Not even that skinny Indian kid.”

“Oh, Ravi doesn’t know anything,” I said. “He just likes to make mischief.”

Ace grimaced. “Noted.”

“Thank you,” I said to Ace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just — I need to know. Why did you lie about not knowing Irene before?”

That was when Ace looked around, as if making sure that no one else was in the apartment. “Because you’re not that hard to read,” she finally said. “You’re the kind of kid that if we told the whole story to you, there’s a big chance you’d get yourself killed.”


	11. Chapter 11

Sitting through Investigations was one of the hardest things I had ever done. But I did it. And I did it with Morris only calling me “spacey” twice.

As soon as class was over, I rushed back to my room and made sure I was presentable. Hair managed. Pants wrinkle-free. I even put on a blazer. Of course, Irene was blind, so impressions weren’t much to her, but I had never stepped foot inside the Merciless Mart before. I was justifiably excited. I brought my bookbag with my laptop and legal pad, just in case I needed to take notes for anything. I wasn’t sure what I was about to face. But just in case. 

Then I took the elevator up to the deserted top floor, where Ace was waiting. “Before I take you, I have some rules,” she told me. 

“Okay,” I said. 

“When we’re in there, you will say nothing. Not a single word. Not a peep. I will do all the talking. And you are never to leave my sight. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Do you?” she asked. 

“Yes,” I told her. 

“Because historically, when I have told you to do something, your response is to do the exact opposite.”

“I promise I’ll stay quiet and stay with you,” I said. 

“I’m going to hold you on that,” said Ace.

She sounded like she wanted to add “or I’ll tell Morris”, but she hadn’t told Morris any of this yet. That I knew of, at least. I doubted she would start now. I think she knew that I knew that. 

We set off. 

It was only a short walk across the street from the Institute to the Merciless Mart, but the journey felt like forever. I couldn’t stop looking up at the building. Or around at the swarms of Candor, dressed in finely-pressed suits and dresses. When we stepped into the lobby, my eye was instantly drawn to a ring of white marble tiles in the black floor. forming the symbol of Candor — a set of unbalanced scales, meant to symbolize the weighing of truth against lies. A bounce brightened my step. Somewhere, this building held the answer I was looking for. Somewhere in the mass of people who modeled what I could be. 

I soon realized why Ace had to do the talking. I had a student ID pinned to my chest like all of the initiates did, but in this crowd it made me stand out like a flashing red light. We passed through a co-ed team of Candor and Dauntless security who checked my ID, then Ace’s ID, then asked why Ace was bringing me. 

“Shadowing for the afternoon,” Ace said. “Phoebe’s a transfer. She still doesn’t know what she wants to do for Candor, so I’m showing her around the real place for the first time.”

The security seemed to like this. “Good idea,” said one of the Candor. “I did always think that the transfers need more hands-on experience. Hell, if I had that, maybe I wouldn’t be working front desk security now.”

“Aw, shut up, Rhonda, you love it up here,” one of the Dauntless teased. 

“I never said that,” Rhonda chuckled. “Alright, you two. Just step through the metal detector and you’re free to go.”

“Thanks again,” Ace grinned.

We passed through without a hitch. Once we were out of their sight, I looked up and Ace and whispered, “How?”

“Your Investigative Technique class,” said Ace, “all those lie detection strategies they teach you — only works on some people.”

“Well, that too, but how’d you know I don’t have a career direction?”

“Lucky guess.”

 She wouldn’t tell me anything else. 

The Merciless Mart, I realized, was one of the few other places in the city where factions seemed to mix. The halls bustled with Candor and clients of the whole spectrum. Dauntless guards in black and silver I predicted, but every once in a while primary colors would flash from an Erudite or Amity, a shadow of an Abnegation flicker through the masses. Or from a factionless. Factionless were everywhere — normally escorted by a Dauntless guard or two, sometimes locked into hand and wrist cuffs. I couldn’t help but try to walk a wide berth around them. I wasn’t unfamiliar with criminals. Most factionless committed crimes. But the ones who were prosecuted by the Candor had to have done something terrible. Once, a grizzled factionless man met my eye. He only had one. The other was a black glass bead. I shuddered and hurried along with Ace. 

The lower levels of the Merciless Mart were mostly public-use courtrooms, so when we stepped onto the elevator and got off at level fourteen, the scene became a little more refined. It was just Candor now. Down the halls were dozens of offices. A metal sign in the lobby read _Department of Academic Integrity._

A young secretary sat at a desk in the lobby and stopped us before we could go any further. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I have an appointment with Irene McCandless,” said Ace. 

McCandless. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“Names?” the secretary asked.

“Ace of Dauntless and Phoebe Prior.”

The secretary’s brow furrowed as he checked his computer. “I’m sorry, you’re not on today’s agenda. Would you like me to make an appointment for later?”

Ace frowned. “There has to be a mistake. I’m sure I have an appointment today.”

“Miss McCandless isn’t seeing anyone today.”

“Then she’s free.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Just tell her that I’m here.”

The secretary hesitated. “I’m afraid — I can’t do that.”

It happened without warning. Ace slammed her hands on the desk, suddenly nose to nose with the secretary. His eyes bulged.

“Interesting choice of words,” she growled. “I said. I have. An appointment.”

“Y-yes, ma’am. Sir! Um,” said the boy, and then scurried away. He scurried down the hall and vanished into a door. Around the lobby, Candor gave us weird looks. One person muttered an insult.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked mildly.

“No. But it was funny,” said Ace.

The secretary reappeared from the door and nervously made his way back to his desk. “Miss McCandless will have you now,” he said meekly, pointing to an office at the end of the hall.

Ace just gave him a grin. Then she led me back to the office. 

When we stepped inside, it was dark. Which I hadn’t expected. The only light came from a computer on the desk — and a pair of reflective glasses above it. Right. Irene was blind.

“Come in,” said Irene. “Close the door.”

“May I turn on the light?” asked Ace.

Irene huffed. “If you must.”

I think it was a joke, because Ace smirked before flicking on the light. When she did, I saw that Irene was sitting at a long white desk, wearing headphones and her signature white suit. Her desk was piled with papers. At first, I wanted to ask how she read the papers, but then I saw her hand moving across one. Three of her fingers had strange silver caps on the ends. Some sort of reading assist technology, probably.

Ace and I sat down in the two chairs, and Irene took off the finger caps and headphones. “Ace,” she said. “Always a pleasure.” She paused and frowned. “Miss Prior.”

“Um...hi again,” I managed.

The frown deepened. “Ace, I told you to keep an eye on her.”

“What?” I said.

“She was making a fool of herself,” said Ace.

Now I frowned. “Excuse me.”

“Please, Miss Prior. The adults are talking,” said Irene. “What does she want?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Ace. “She figured out that I know you, and all she wanted was to talk to you. So just get her to stop bothering me.”

Irene pressed her lips together. She sighed. “Fine,” she muttered. “There’s coffee in the break room.”

“Thank you,” said Ace, standing. Then she turned to me. “Find me afterwards. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“No promises,” I said, which was the wrong response. Ace gave me a glare that could bore through a brick wall.

Once Ace was gone and had closed the door behind her, Irene walked over and locked it. Then she sat back down, folded her hands, and regarded me. At least, I figured that she was regarding me. I quietly opened my notepad and checked my list of questions. It was a very long list. 

But Irene asked first. She reached for her coffee thermos and took a sip. “What were you thinking?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said truthfully. 

“You’re not stupid.” Irene slammed the thermos down with such force that the papers on the desk jumped. So did I. “You know what I mean. You chose Candor specifically to answer what you got on your aptitude test. Am I wrong?”

Honestly, when she said it, and every time I had thought about it, it sounded a little more stupid. 

“I mean...a good Candor always wants to know the truth?” I tried. 

Again, it was the wrong response. Irene’s mouth opened, then closed, like a fish gasping in air. Then she said, “Excuse me,” opened a drawer in her desk, and pulled out a pillow. She took off her glasses and pressed the pillow to her face. She screamed into the pillow, a long and unbreaking scream for a full thirty seconds. I was so shocked that I couldn’t even move. I just watched. It was horrifying. 

Finally, Irene stopped and put the pillow and her glasses back.

“Are you okay?” I asked. 

She smiled. “Really, no.”

“Listen, I know it sounds stupid,” I began. 

“It was stupid,” said Irene. 

“But I know there was more to my aptitude test than that, there had to be, I — ”

“Did you forget the part where I said to forget about the test or it’ll get you killed?” Irene snapped.

“No, I — ”

“Do you realize that not knowing the answer is infinitely safer for you than knowing the answer, keeping it secret, and having to lie?”

“Well — ”

“Have you considered that this is possibly the most dangerous faction to choose if you want to keep a deadly secret?”

“It crossed my mind, but — ”

“And are you aware that to become a full Candor, you must take a truth serum and admit _every single secret you know?_ Do you realize that if I gave you an answer, the Full Unveiling might actually be the end of your life?”

“I just want to know the truth! Is that so much to ask?”

The office fell into silence. I couldn’t even hear the bustle of the room outside the door. This room was soundproofed, I knew. Why, I couldn’t say. Irene bowed her head. 

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asked. 

I hesitated. I thought of the Full Unveiling, that mysterious final exam. I offered a quick prayer and then inhaled. “Yes.”

“The truth is,” she whispered, “your aptitude test assigned you Candor.”

I opened my mouth. But then she lifted her head again. 

“And Abnegation,” she continued. “And Dauntless, and Amity, and Erudite. Your results were — you passed every single simulation, Miss Prior, something that is not supposed to happen.”

I looked at my hands. Every simulation? “But I thought I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t,” she said softly. “Typically, the simulation progresses in a linear fashion, letting you fail until you pass one. The first stage was the decision between the knife and the flower. If you had shown an automatic distaste of the knife and selected the flower, I would have sent you to the room of people, and if you passed, would have confirmed your aptitude for Amity. If you chose the knife, you would have gone to the dog, the test for Dauntless. If you failed both, then you would go to the locked room with the passcode, the Erudite test. If you failed that too, you would have been taken to the bomb, the Abnegation test. And if you failed to act before the bomb went off, I would have sent you to the Candor test — the murderer.”

“So I was only supposed to make it all the way if I failed?” I croaked. 

“In theory.” Irene sighed. “Technically, you failed the Amity and Dauntless tests. The Amity test passes when you place the flower on the pedestal. The Dauntless test passes when you kill the dog. You tried to choose both objects, which the simulation does not allow. But both of your solutions, singing to the crowd and bowing before the dog, worked. So I took you to Erudite, hoping to rule that out. You passed that one correctly. You passed the Abnegation test by throwing yourself on the bomb. And you passed the Candor test — twice.”

“Wait — twice?”

“Once in the simulation, when you admitted to the murder,” said Irene, “and again when I lied, and you knew it wasn’t the truth.”

“So...I don’t have an aptitude,” I said. 

She hesitated. “Yes and no. My conclusion is that you display equal aptitude for all five factions. People who get this kind of result, aptitude for three or more factions, are — ” She hesitated again, letting the silence linger, as if trying to sense people who might be listening in. “They’re called — Divergent.”

Irene said the last word so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear. _Divergent._ I was silent for a very, very long time. Every faction. I waited for my logic to protest, to realize Irene was lying again, or to suddenly come up with any other explanation than the one Irene was giving me. But there was nothing. For the first time, it felt — right. 

“Why did you lie about it?” I asked.

“Divergence is not something to be taken lightly, Miss Prior,” said Irene. “I lied because the alternative was to reveal you to my superiors, and that was something I could not in good conscience do to you.”

My tongue was dry in my mouth. “What’s wrong with your superiors?”

She hesitated. “Nothing. I don’t know. I can’t tell you.” 

“Those are three very different answers,” I said warily. 

“There are things that are — literally impossible for me to explain, Miss Prior.” Her lip tugged; she was biting it from the inside. “The only thing I can tell you is that being Divergent is very, very dangerous. You cannot tell anyone. Don’t even let slip that you know the word.”

“We aren’t supposed to share our results.” I nodded. “I know that.”

“No.” Irene leaned forward and reached across the desk. I put my hands in hers and she squeezed them tight, so tight that it hurt. “Remember what I told you about your simulation possibly getting you killed? Adding the word ‘Divergent’ into the mix increases that ‘possibly’ to ‘immediately’. Am I making myself clear?”

I swallowed. “Crystal.” My voice still trembled.

“The Full Unveiling shouldn’t ask the results of your aptitude test — that’s still protected information. But it is very possible that something might still come up. Due to your Divergence, there are certain ways for you to lie. I will be in contact with you closer to the date of your Unveiling.”

“Okay.”

Irene sighed and lowered her head. “I wish I could give you the answers you want,” she said, much softer now. “But I think it would be wise for you not to worry about this for now. Focus on the exams, alright?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I can tell that it’s a struggle for you to say that,” said Irene.

She was right. “Yes.”

“I understand.”

I didn’t know if she could. Her grip on my hands loosened.

“Can I ask one more question?” I asked.

“You can try.”

“What about Ace? Is she — Divergent?”

“That is for Ace alone to answer. But I think that, no matter what the truth is, you’re going to get a firm no.”

Irene let go of my hands.

“You’d do well to follow her example.”

* * *

After Irene was finished, she dismissed me and gave me directions to the break room, where Ace would be waiting for me. I wasn’t even in good enough of a mood to disobey. I just found the room, walked over to where Ace was sipping a coffee in the corner, and said, “I’m ready to go now.”

Ace eyed me, as if puzzled. “Is that it?”

“I guess.”

She shrugged and stood. As we walked out of the Merciless Mart, so did hundreds of other Candor, going home for the day. I just stared, unfocused, at the wash of white and black.

Soon I was back in the Institute. It was not yet dinner, so Ace dropped me off where I would normally study, the courtyard. Oona was there and gave me a strange look when I walked over. 

“Where were you?” she asked.

“Merciless Mart,” I said flatly.

“For what?”

I dropped my stuff on the ground next to her.

“Job shadowing,” I said, echoing Ace. “Since I...I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”


	12. Chapter 12

That night, I couldn’t sleep. 

And only in part because of the Divergent thing. 

The past several nights, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and now Tuesday, Aletheia had been holding more of those “Candor-exclusive parties”. At least five Candor-born were in our apartment at all times, laughing and smoking and drinking a lot of fine wine. The party would escalate along with blood alcohol content, peaking at around midnight. The next morning, I would walk out the door to find a Candor boy still passed out on the couch and some girl’s bra on the kitchen counter. Class attendance that day would be suspiciously low of Candor-born. 

I had never liked parties. It wasn’t even just an Abnegation thing — I simply could never wrap my head around it. Even though drinking alcohol was legal at sixteen, I had never wanted to do it. It was massively expensive and it smelled gross and it made people loopy. I definitely did not want to share such an experience with peers. But what I hated most about parties, I realized, was when your roommate hosted them in your apartment every night without any regards to whether or not you were getting any sleep. Every time I tried to drift off, someone’s laugh would pierce the night, or someone would shout something lewd, or someone would begin jumping on the couch and shaking the whole building. 

I tried to say things on nights before. Aletheia just convinced everyone else to ignore me. Granted, I was easy to ignore; I had never had a strong voice. But tonight, I lost my nerve. 

They were playing some sort of truth or dare game and I could hear every word. I was tired. It was two in the morning. I opened my door, leaned out, and screamed:

_ “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! SHUT UP!” _

Then I slammed my door. 

The last time I had yelled — really, truly yelled — was when I was a toddler. Now, I was overcome by how good it felt. My whole body was shaking as I stomped to my bed and yanked the covers over me.

The apartment went unusually quiet after I had yelled that. There was a single spurt of laughter from two people — Aletheia and her stupid lackey Katie — but then the conversation seemed to die down. The front door opened, then, a long time later, closed. The apartment was then quiet for a very long time and I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, as it had been for the past few days, very few Candor-born were in class. The exception was Sherlock, who came very late and disheveled to Legal Procedure. Judge Touma even stopped class to regard him.

“I thought being late and not knowing how to tie a tie was Mr. Balakrishnan’s signature statement,” said Judge Touma, to which the whole class chuckled. Ravi just grinned. He had made himself a sort of reverse teacher’s pet, I noticed — all the professors knew him and loved him, even though he wasn’t a good or obedient student. He was just likeable.

Sherlock’s face, in turn, was red as a beet. “Sorry, Your Honor,” he murmured, then scurried to the back of the class. To my surprise, he sat next to me.

“Mr. De Luca,” said Judge Touma, addressing Sherlock, “say that you did, in fact, steal Mr. Balakrishnan’s style. He was so successful with his style that he decided to become a fashion designer of suits with untied ties. Then you come along and use the same technology to do the same thing. Which of the four types of intellectual property rights could Mr. Balakrishnan accuse you of infringing — copyright, patent, trade secret, or trademark?”

Sherlock hesitated. Under the table, I nudged his foot with my own, then typed on my computer,  _ Patent; aspect of product. _

“Patent,” said Sherlock. “Because…he would be accusing me of stealing an aspect of the product.”

Touma raised her chin, then nodded and moved on with the lesson.

After a few minutes, a message popped up in the corner of my screen. All of the initiates had a chat app that they could communicate with each other in. I hadn’t used it much except to message Oona when I accidentally locked my key in the apartment. The new message was from Sherlock.

_**S. De Luca:** Thanks for covering for me.  _

I stole a glance over to him. The room was too small for us to get away with whispering. He was acting like he was taking notes from Judge Touma’s lecture, looking up at her and back down at his screen intermittently. 

Another message popped up. 

_**S. De Luca:** I’m sorry about last night’s party. They get a little out of hand sometimes. _

_**P. Prior:** “Sometimes.” _

_**S. De Luca:** All the time. _

_**P. Prior:** Yes. _

_**S. De Luca:** Somehow I can tell you’re mad even if you’re not saying it out loud. _

_**P. Prior:** Well, I’m sorry, I guess I’m just a little tired. Since I haven’t slept well for the past three nights. But it’s not like any of you care — you don’t have to come to class if you don’t want to. _

His end of the chat was silent for a very long time. I didn’t dare sneak another glance towards him. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I saw him glance at me.

_**S. De Luca:** You’re right. And I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to apologize for anything.  _

_**P. Prior:** No, I shouldn’t. _

_**S. De Luca:** I didn’t say anything the first time Aletheia brushed you off, so I’m just as much at fault as she is. _

_**P. Prior:** Yes, you are. _

_**S. De Luca:** It’s just kind of a shock. When you grow up Candor, you know a lot of this stuff already, so you’re told that initiation will be easy and that now’s the time to blow off class and party. It was a surprise to a lot of us that if we don’t pass, we’ll be factionless, but now that’s not as much of a concern. _

_**P. Prior:** For you. _

_**S. De Luca:** Yeah. We have an unfair advantage. And it’s not right for us to party all night and put you at a greater disadvantage. I’m sorry. _

_**P. Prior:** I accept your apology. _

_**S. De Luca:** Thank you.  _

_**P. Prior:** Just don’t wake me up again. _

_**S. De Luca:** I’ll tell Aletheia that we shouldn’t have them in your place anymore. I can get the other guys on my side, too.  _

_**P. Prior:** Thanks. _

That was the end of our conversation. I couldn’t say I had completely forgiven Sherlock at that point, but I respected him for apologizing and for having the maturity to know why I was angry.

Aletheia was not quite as noble.

She was at lunch, her blond hair a bird’s nest and eyes bloodshot, and I caught her and Katie passing nasty glares over at me. 

“You know, everyone in Amity would hate me for telling you this,” commented Oona, “but what you said last night was awesome.”

“Thanks,” I said, meeting Aletheia’s eyes from across the dining hall. She leered at me before stabbing her fish fillet with a fork. “I think it was, too.”

Aletheia wouldn’t have an opportunity to be mad at me in our apartment. I stayed out of the room, studying in the library until ten at night. When I arrived home, there were a few cigarettes in the ashtray that hadn’t been there that morning, so Aletheia and Katie had been home, but weren’t anymore. I presumed that they had moved their festivities out of the room for one reason or another. 

Whatever it was, I was happy, and finally had a long night’s rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of a 2-part update, since this ones kinda boring, and I can do what I want


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of a 2-part update!

I was fortunate. The next morning, when I went to Reasoning, I realized something would be very different about that day. 

The door to the lecture hall was locked with a note reading,  _ 9:00 A.M. Initiate Reasoning cancelled. Meet on front steps of Institute. _

“It’s a field trip,” said Ravi as we walked. 

“It can’t be a field trip,” I told him. “What would we be doing, exactly?”

“Maybe going to help in a trial,” he said. “Or investigating a murder.”

“That’s what they do in 1L. Not with initiates.”

“Maybe it’s just a break-in.”

“It won’t be field trip and it won’t be a break-in.”

Five minutes later we stood on the steps of the Institute. Judge Morris stood between our group and a waiting bus. 

“Good morning,” he said. “As you may have noticed, we are going on a field trip. Today, we are going to assist in the investigation of a break-in.”

Ravi elbowed me. I elbowed him back much harder. 

We herded onto the bus, fifteen of us — only four Candor-born and an Erudite were missing. Sherlock was there and gave me a strange look that I couldn’t decipher, but I shrugged it off and just went to sit with Oona and Ravi in the back. 

We arrived at a large, white and blue house perched on the boundary between the Candor and Erudite districts. The iron-wrought gates opened for us when we left the bus, and a waiting Dauntless lifted the police tape so that we could get in. The house itself was surrounded by a team of Dauntless cops in black jackets and Candor investigators in white coats. One of the cops, speaking to an investigator, took a file from him. It was none other than Ace. I avoided her eyes. 

Ace passed the file to Judge Morris. He looked at it and then at us. “Initiates,” he said, “today you are very lucky. Few initiate classes have the opportunity to shadow on an active crime scene, but due to the small size of your class and the nature of this case, your superiors deemed it appropriate to bring a fresh set of eyes to it. Please take out your observation pads.”

We obeyed. Each of us had an observation pad, a small spiral-ring notepad used for investigation exercises. But this wasn’t an exercise anymore — this was real. Morris cleared his throat and opened the file. 

“This home belongs to an Erudite man named Thomas Beauregard. Last night, Beauregard was out of his house and working late at the office. When he returned at three a.m., he believed he heard a noise, like someone was in the house, but dismissed it as nothing. He went to lock his door, then realized that the security systems were offline and that one of the cords had been severed. He called the police immediately. When we arrived, nothing had been stolen except Beauregard’s Choosing Ceremony knife, which had been in a glass box in his living room.”

We began to scribble notes furiously.

Oona raised her hand. “Your Honor? Why did he have his knife?”

“Beauregard is sixty-three years old,” said Morris. “When he was sixteen, metal was cheaper. Everyone got to keep their knife.”

That made more sense. All of our resources nowadays were in short supply; we had no choice but to recycle everything. But there were still a few people left who could remember when life wasn’t like that. 

“So why would someone steal it?” asked Oona.

“That’s for you to find out,” said Morris. 

Sherlock raised his hand as well. “Does he live alone?”

Morris nodded. “His ex-wife divorced him twelve years ago and his only son transferred to Amity. Neither family member has been in contact with him lately.”

“It’s gotta be the ex-wife,” said Ravi. “It’s always the ex.”

“Not necessarily,” said Morris. “She has openly stated that she still respects him, and for good reason. Beauregard is the chair of the Low-Income Child Education Board, the organization that provides education to factionless children. He has good relationships with just about everyone he knows.”

“Could still be the ex-wife,” Ravi shrugged. “People lie.”

“She certainly didn’t lie when a Candor went to her house and asked,” said Ace.

I thought back to our time at the Merciless Mart — how effortlessly Ace had lied to the front desk security and then to Irene’s secretary. Ironic that Ace was claiming so much faith in a Candor’s lie detection ability.

“Those are all the hints I will give you,” said Morris. “I have grouped you into five teams of three. Each team will have thirty minutes to investigate the house. We shall return to the Institute and you shall have the afternoon to work with your group and present what you observed, what questions you asked, who you think committed the crime, and why it was committed, as well as anything else you have observed. The team with the best investigative report will receive merciful permission to skip for two full days.”

That caused a little stir. While it wasn’t required to attend classes, most of us were still terrified by the threat of failing the initiate exams. The administration understood this. As a result, a common incentive around the Institute was what we called merciful permission to skip, or “mercy skip” — granted by the administration to students unable to attend class, but who still wished to learn the information. The student would be given the professor’s full lecture notes for the classes missed. Initially, mercy skips had been intended for students who got sick, so they wouldn’t pass their illness on to the whole Institute. But mercy skips had other uses, like incentivizing a break-in investigation. 

Morris split us into our groups. I was with Leanne from Erudite and Sherlock. A pretty evenly balanced team, if I said so myself; I was ready to ask Leanne everything she knew about how Erudite households worked. We were to go in the second shift. 

Since it was a nice day, we were told to just sit and study in the park across the street. But it became clear that nobody was having anything of the sort. This was a real crime scene. Chatter ran wild among the crowd. Maybe it was the ex-wife. Maybe Beauregard had secret enemies. Had anyone heard anything else about the man? No? Not even the Erudite transfers? Okay. Crime in general was not common in the factions — at least, not that we knew of. Crime was something that happened to the factionless. But there was still an undeniable spice to it, a sex appeal that beckoned. 

I sat alone under a tree, my laptop open. Oona had gone with the first group and Ravi had been whisked away by some of the Dauntless. They liked his spunk, I guess.

I wondered, for a flash second, if Ravi could be Divergent too. He was smart as an Erudite, clever as a Candor, and brash as a Dauntless. What about Oona? Sometimes she seemed so torn between her Amity upbringing and her Candor ancestry. For that matter, what about  _ Ace?  _ I had never met a true Dauntless who would willingly choose what seemed like the most boring security job in the world. Sometimes Ace acted more like an Erudite than anything, self-centered, cocky, and one step ahead of everyone. It would explain why she didn’t like me much. 

Was I overthinking this? Was Irene just telling me something made-up to get me off her back? Was it really that dangerous? If I could tell when other people might be Divergent, could other people tell that  _ I _ — 

“Hey, earth to Phoebe?”

I looked up. Sherlock was there, his hands in his pockets. 

“Oh. Hey,” I said. 

“Can I sit?” he asked. 

“Sure.”

He sat a few feet away. He coughed. I just looked back at my laptop, where I had my class notes open. 

“What are you working on?” Sherlock asked. 

I showed him. “Reviewing for Arguments. We have the debate tomorrow.”

We had debates every Thursday. Judge Bandele would give us a topic and split us up, and each of us would have five minutes to argue a point on behalf of the team. It was spitfire and hectic and very, very intimidating. Last week’s topic had been “Should the Choosing age be lowered to fourteen?” 

 “There’s rumors that this question will be ‘Should roommates be optional’,” said Sherlock. 

I laughed. “I wish.”

He just grinned and picked a few blades of grass to fiddle with. 

“Why aren’t you sitting with the Candor?” I asked. 

“Who said I’m not?”

“You know I’m not a real Candor yet.”

“Fair.” He shrugged. “Well, Brighton and Eurydice are dating now, and Clyde’s inside, so I’m the third wheel.”

I frowned. “What’s wrong with that?”

“You can’t tell?” Sherlock chuckled, then pointed across the lawn. 

Eurydice and Brighton were curled up under a tree, Brighton’s jacket draped over Eurydice’s thin shoulders. She shifted to kiss his cheek. I couldn’t help but stare. I’d only seen a few kisses in my life — some between my parents, others more recently in passing in the Institute halls. But never anything this intimate. 

In return, Brighton tilted Eurydice’s chin up and pressed his lips to hers. Air hissed between my teeth and I looked away. Part of me waited for someone to scold them. Another part wondered, with a tug of desperation, what it felt like to do that.

“You okay?” Sherlock asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, then amended it. I was still gradually learning not to say that I was fine when I wasn't. “Public displays of affection are still — kinda hard to see. I’m getting used to it.”

“Why — oh. Abnegation. Right.”

I chuckled. “Is it really that hard to tell me apart from a real Candor?”

“Honestly? Yes!” Sherlock laughed, running his hand through his dark curls. “You’re one of the most brutally honest, self-assured people that I’ve ever met, and I grew up in this faction.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“If it’s not, take it as one.”

We fell into an amicable silence. After a while, we started working on Reasoning practice problems together. 

And then it happened. Oona’s group returned, led by Ace. “Group two,” Ace announced.

Sherlock, Leanne, and I got up and followed her across the street to the house. When we drew closer, I noticed that many of the investigators and cops had vanished. Only one, a bored-looking young Candor man, was left.

“This is Detective Ryan,” said Ace.

“Here are your gloves,” said Ryan, passing out several pairs of white gloves. “Couple ground rules in there — I’m only gonna tell you what Morris says is okay to tell you; if you want to know more, you gotta figure it out yourself. Don’t touch the evidence unless you have to, and if you feel like you should, ask me first. If you’re leaving the first floor, ask me or your guard.”

“I have a name,” said Ace.

Ryan ignored her. “Let’s go in.”

We followed him into the front door. I tried to hide my amazement when I saw the inside — the white ceiling stretched two stories up; a beautiful spiral staircase led up to an indoor bridge and a crystal chandelier glittered over the huge living room. Beauregard was a man who liked luxury. 

Ryan stopped in the front door and knelt. A little yellow card with the number 3 sat on the ground by the doorframe.

“This is where the alarm system was sabotaged,” he said.

“That’s one of those flimsy older models,” said Sherlock. “The newer ones send an alert if someone tries to saw through it like that. Beauregard didn’t think he was at much of a risk, did he?”

It was a pretty keen observation. I began to nod, but then Ryan gave Sherlock a look.

“Just let me do my damn job, Sherlock Holmes,” said Ryan.

“My name really is Sherlock, actually,” said Sherlock, clearly not getting the insult.

Ryan continued giving us the tour of the first floor, which took exactly thirty seconds more. He told us that the intruder likely climbed over the fence to get in and out, but had left no trace. The only other piece of evidence was the living room mantelpiece — Beauregard’s Choosing Ceremony knife. Or the lack of. The knife had rested in a glass case above the fireplace. This glass case had been carefully lifted off the fireplace and set on the floor, where someone had unlatched it and removed the knife.

That was all Detective Ryan told us, and presumably, all there was. I didn’t see any more yellow tags. So Sherlock, Leanne, and I got to work. Sherlock checked for fingerprints on the case (none). Leanne checked out the security system (someone just slid a blade through and sawed at the wire that would have sounded if the lock was tampered with). I checked the handle of the door (our thief was, indeed, a lockpicker). But that was it. We were done with it in five minutes and sat in a circle in the living room.

“Is that really it?” Leanne asked. “It’s too simple. Someone came in, took the knife, and left.”

“But how did they leave?” asked Sherlock. “Beauregard said he heard someone in the house when he got home. The thief couldn’t leave through the front because he was standing there the whole time.”

“The thief could have left another way,” I said.

“Back door, windows,” suggested Leanne.

“Already checked those, but if you want,” muttered Ryan.

So we did. Just as Ryan said, we found nothing. The windows all had screens that needed to be unscrewed, making a quick escape impossible. The back door had a terribly squeaky hinge and Ryan informed us that Beauregard did not hear the sound of the hinge. The garage and the front door were the only way in and out, and Beauregard had not heard the garage door either.

But something about it didn’t quite strike me right.

“Wait,” I said. “If Beauregard has a car, why did he enter through the front door? Not the garage?”

Leanne and Sherlock shrugged. We all looked to Detective Ryan.

“I’m — not permitted to say,” he said. But we all knew basic lie detection. He had no idea.

I checked the security logs on the garage and front doors. The signal from the front cut out at around 2:50 a.m., ten minutes before Beauregard said to have come home, but there was no record that the garage door had been opened at any point after that. Or, for that matter, before. The last time the garage door had been opened was the previous night. Beauregard had not driven to work that morning.

“Did he often carpool?” asked Sherlock. 

Ryan shifted awkwardly. “I’m not permitted to say.”

“Can we check his debit card statements?” I asked. “Maybe if he took the bus, we’ll know.”

“I — have to call my supervisor about that,” said Ryan. 

I was beginning to itch. Suddenly, a basic crime scene turned into a hundred possibilities of mystery. Maybe Beauregard not driving to and from work on the day of the break-in was a coincidence, but my gut told me that there was a connection. Somewhere. My teammates seemed to agree. I wanted to explore more of the house, badly. Leanne seemed to notice me shifting back and forth between my feet and said, “Keep going. I’ll negotiate the call, okay?”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

With Ace silently following, Sherlock and I set off. Neither of us found anything of note in the kitchen, dining room, or downstairs office. There was a wine cellar that I was curious about, but it was locked. There was no sign of lockpicking as there had been on the front door.

We went upstairs. For a single man, Beauregard had a lot of space. An entertainment room with a huge television, a personal library, and a bedroom that could have swallowed my whole house in Abnegation. For a while I just stood in the center of the bedroom, soaking in the sun from a diamond-shaped skylight in the slanted ceiling.

“Well, this is kind of a dead end,” said Sherlock. “Didn’t see anything in the bathroom, the windows there are the same as downstairs.”

“Maybe we should have taken the back door more seriously,” I murmured.

“It’s possible the thief did escape through there, but Beauregard was so surprised about the front door damage that he didn’t hear,” Sherlock put in.

“Or you two are entirely overthinking it,” said Ace. 

“It’s investigation,” I said. “We’re supposed to think a lot.”

She held out her arms in an exaggerated shrug. “He’s old as hell. Maybe he imagined that he heard someone inside the house, when the thief actually left before he got home.”

 I closed my eyes, letting the sunlight warm my face. They both had a point. But something was still missing and I couldn’t figure out what it was. It itched. I reached behind my neck to itch the base of my scalp. Then under my starched cuffs to itch my wrists. Then my nose, hot with the sun.

_ The skylights. _

There were two of them on the outside of the house. I remembered. Erudite buildings were all so symmetrical like that. This was one of them, the other…

I whirled around. On the other side of the room was the bathroom and a walk-in closet. I raced into the bathroom. The ceiling was just the height of a normal ceiling, meaning there was a huge space between the ceiling and the roof. I checked the closet. It was the same way. But on this ceiling was a square.

“Is that the attic door?” I asked Ace.

“As far as I know, yes,” she said.

I flicked on the light to see better. There was no easy way to get into the attic, no stepladder in sight. Just open cabinets with rows of suits and neatly-folded pants. Or mostly neat. Some of the pant squares had odd indentations in them, like someone had stepped on them. It became very clear to me that you didn’t need a stepladder to get into the attic.

“The thief climbed the cabinets to get to the attic,” I said. “We have to check up there.”

“Incredible,” Sherlock murmured.

Ace paled. “I think I should ask Ryan first.”

I gave her a look. “Are you saying that because you actually respect Ryan, or because you think I’m about to try something stupid?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” Ace said. 

“That’s what I thought. Look, I’m not going to touch anything,” I said. “If we find that the skylight’s shattered and the thief escaped off the roof, then I’ll ask to touch things.”

“Fine,” said Ace finally. “But you’re not climbing.” She knelt and told me, “Get on my shoulders.”

I couldn’t argue. I did. As if I was a small child, Ace lifted me to the height of the attic door, letting me push it open. Despite not being that strong, I surprised myself by pulling myself over the edge without any help from Ace. Then I stood, coughing.

The attic was dark and grey and empty. The diamond skylight, dusty from countless years of neglect, let in only dim, filtered light. There were only a few boxes and old pieces of furniture stacked in the corners. It shouldn’t have scared me, but there was something deeply eerie about the place, something in how my breath echoed in the space that I didn’t like. Like I was being watched. I was relieved when I finally heard a voice from downstairs. 

“What do you see?” Sherlock called. 

“Not much,” I replied.

I moved forward, shuffling through mothballs. The dust was disturbed in places and not by me. Someone had been here recently. 

“I definitely think our thief came here,” I continued. “I’m gonna check out the window.”

“Don’t touch anything, I’m sending Sherlock up, and I’ll be up in a second,” said Ace.

“I won’t touch, I promise,” I called back.

I knelt in front of the window. There were definite signs that the window had been tampered with. It couldn’t open and the screws around the edges were rusted shut. But like the floor, the dust showed a rich history of movement. One tiny panel, I realized, was even loose, and seemed to have been removed at some point. I went back on my promise for a minute in order to try removing it again. A breath of fresh air poured in and a beam of light shone on the ground. 

Onto a patch of crumbs.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it right. Crumbs? From food? But when I knelt, I realized I was right. They were bread crumbs, fresh and soft. The thief had eaten here? Why? Escaping from a crime scene wasn’t exactly the best time to stop for a snack.

And that was when it all clicked. None of the windows or doors had seemed forced open because they weren’t. The tiny panel on the skylight was the only thing damaged because the skylight wasn’t the escape route. The thief had stopped for a snack because the thief wasn’t going anywhere fast. And the echoes of my breath — the deep shadows of the boxes and furniture — the creaking of the floorboards —

We didn’t know how the thief escaped because the thief never left the house. 

I turned. I sprinted for the attic door. 

_ “ACE — ” _

Something collided with me. Something dark and dusty and inhumanly strong. 

I tumbled to the ground. I rolled with the thing, but it wouldn’t let go, and all I could do was sob and scream and flail helplessly. A bony hand squeezed my neck. A wiry arm looped around my body. I had bitten a hole in my cheek and coughed on blood.

I fought to get to my feet, but the thing pulled me into its body. I couldn’t breathe. Its greasy yellow hair swung in front of my eyes.

Sherlock was on the ground, eyes wide, having just been lifted into the attic. But there was nothing he could do. He just trembled. Then Ace appeared in a black flash, jumping between Sherlock and me and the thing. 

“Let her go!” Ace snapped.

The thing laughed. It was female. I looked down at the arms wrapped around my body — they might have been delicate, once. But the woman who held me was not. The shaking hands were wrapped in crude black gloves and the wrists were peppered with blisters. 

“If I can’t get Mister Beau, this kid’ll have to do,” the woman slurred. I could feel her hot spittle on the back of my neck. I didn’t care. I just sobbed. 

_ Shing! _

A flash of metal. The woman pulled a knife. A Choosing Ceremony knife. The tip wavered by my collarbone. 

Ace pulled her gun.

“Drop the knife or I’ll shoot!” she shouted.

“You’d do that?” the woman cackled. But this time, it almost sounded like my weeping. She pressed the knifepoint through my shirt, drawing blood. I gasped in pain. “You’d think…a Dauntless would call me brave. You’d think — a Candor — would call this justice — ”

_ BANG! _

The knife sliced air and the skin of my chest, the arms around me loosened, and Ace’s gunshot echoed so deep in my head that I didn’t know if I would ever stop hearing it. The woman dropped to the ground behind me. She did not move again. 

I fell into Ace’s arms and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, uh


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway so i just stabbed my narrator. in related news, in one of my other stories, my narrator got hit by a truck in the third chapter. i think i have a pattern of causing physical harm to my narrators just for the hell of it but who knows tbh. theyre all assholes, they deserve it

At least I got the mercy skips that I wanted. 

I spent one night in the hospital and the next two days in my bedroom. I had a three-inch cut stretching from my collarbone to just above my heart. It was closed with stitches, lathered in healing gel, and wrapped in a bandage, and for good measure my left arm was put in a sling so I wouldn’t move it too much while the cut healed. 

I didn’t speak for a while after the incident. Just found a window and looked out at the sky. Initially it was just the Amity nurses, rotating in and out through my room. I didn’t want to talk to them. They kept echoing platitudes like “You’re safe now” and “Breathe” that went in one ear and out the other. 

When they let my friends in, around dinner time, then it was a little easier. Oona and Ravi rushed in first. 

“Oh my god, Phoebe,” Oona sobbed. She looked like she wanted to hug me, but a nurse held up a hand and she stopped. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I said flatly. The painkillers they gave me had wiped out every last emotion in my body. “Since someone tried to stab me.”

“Yeah, Loony, someone tried to stab her,” said Ravi. 

He held out his fist for what I’d come to know as a “fist-bump”. I clumsily gave it. “You’re a legend, by the way,” he told me. “Everyone’s talking about you. Phoebe Prior, the initiate who solved a case that even the pros couldn’t.”

“I almost got stabbed,” I pointed out. 

“Yeah, but you solved it,” said Ravi. 

“Everyone’s talking about me?” I mumbled. I didn’t know much at that moment. But I knew I didn’t like people talking about me.

“Don’t worry, it’s all good stuff,” said Oona. “I mean...mostly. It turned out that the crazy woman was planning to kill Beauregard in his sleep, but she didn’t know that he was going to be gone so long. She hid in the attic and was waiting for the police to leave the house before killing him later. You kinda saved his life. Some people are calling you stupid for going up there all alone, but most people think that’s unfair, since nobody knew the crazy woman was up there, so how could you have known.”

The crazy woman. The woman who grabbed me, wrapping her knobby hands around my body, holding the knife up. “What happened to her?”

“Ace shot her, remember?” said Ravi.

“She’s dead?”

Both of them nodded. They seemed happy. But suddenly, my chest hurt, burning not just in the wound but deep inside of me.

“Who was she?” I croaked.

“Some factionless prostitute,” Ravi told me. “We called Beauregard in to identify her face and found she was one of his old students in the factionless project schools. Guess she came back for revenge against the old man, but she didn’t know he was out of the house, and he called the cops before she could spring out on him.”

I didn’t like that word,  _ revenge.  _ Something about it didn’t feel right. The woman had called it justice. Justice for what? Revenge for what? I wanted to ask, but Oona and Ravi probably wouldn’t have an answer. I kept that to myself. 

I thanked them, we had a nice hospital dinner together, and they left. The nurses gave me a drug that made me sleep for fifteen hours.

The next morning, I was released back to Candor. A nurse got me situated in bed and lined all sorts of medication, bandages, and healing gels on my bedside table. Then I was left alone again. I liked being alone, but only sometimes, and right now I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I found one of Morris’ lectures in the student website and cranked the volume to max just so the silence of the apartment wouldn’t drive me insane. 

I had almost died. And all I had done about it was cry. 

At eleven thirty, after the first class of the day let out, I heard voices in the apartment beyond. Then there was a soft knock. “Phoebe?” said Oona, cracking open my door. 

“Yeah?” I said.

“You’ve got a couple more visitors, can they come in?” she asked. 

I pushed my curls out of my eyes and reached for my white robe to cover my shoulders. “I don’t look great, but okay.”

She grinned. Then she stepped aside. “Step inside, everyone!”

I had a split second to wonder what “everyone” meant and regret all my life’s decisions. 

Then my room exploded with people. Ravi and Oona of course. The whole squad of Dauntless, Lars, Zac, Altagracia, Felice, Teddy. Jed from Amity. Leanne from Erudite. And so many Candor-born — Sherlock, Eurydice, Brighton, and Clyde, all of the ones who had been there as I was wheeled out of Beauregard’s house on a stretcher. Sherlock held a giant bouquet of more flowers than I could name, and Lars cleared my desk so that it could sit there in a vase. On the front was a big heart-shaped card reading “GET WELL SOon” in bubble letters that shrunk smaller as they approached the end until the last two letters had to curve on the edge of the heart. 

“Surprise!” Oona sang, doing jazz hands.

“How — why — ” I was speechless. 

“We thought you might need cheering up,” said Lars.

My face was heating up so fast I thought it might explode. “Oh, God, you really didn’t need to.”

“Of course we did,” said Oona, putting her hand on my shoulder. “When someone from your faction takes a knife for the team, this is what you do for them. Organize the whole class, pool some money for flowers, and make a get well card.”

“I did all the organizing and planning, you’re welcome,” Ravi put in.

“He’s joking,” Oona replied quickly. “I did the planning.”

 Awkwardly, I got out of bed to look at the flowers. I didn’t like how everyone was staring at me, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I touched a sunflower. Neither Abnegation nor Candor were much for pops of color in their interior decorating, and I almost felt like I was seeing color for the first time in years. Yellow was so pretty. I wanted to live in it.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

“I got up early this morning to buy them from some Amity farmers,” said Sherlock. “Do...do you like them?”

“They’re beautiful,” I said. 

The full force of the meaning hit me like a wave. Someone had gone out of their way to get me something, just so that I could look at it and like it. Not for any purpose. Just so I might find a bit of joy. I had spent all my life giving, and giving, and giving. And now I was getting. 

I couldn’t help it. I cried again.

It made for an awkward few minutes as everyone asked why I was crying. But eventually I was able to put myself together long enough to kind of explain; I had never received a frivolous, non-utilitarian gift before. It was happy crying. I got a few hugs, which I didn’t often get either. Most people left after that. Leanne and Oona stayed. Sherlock and Ravi went down to the dining hall to pick up some meals in to-go boxes. The five of us ate in my room together.

They stayed until two, when they all left for their afternoon class. I was alone again for a while. Miriam, our housekeeper, came a few minutes later to clean, like she would normally do when we were out of the apartment. 

Miriam and I never spoke much. I rarely saw her, and when I did, there was not much to say. Our lives were so different that I didn’t know where to start. 

But today the silence was amicable. She swept my floor and took the laundry and tidied the closet. She looked at the flowers for a little while before jerking herself away, as if it wasn’t her place to look at pretty things. I told her that it was fine and she should try smelling them, too, because they smelled nice. She liked them. 

When someone knocked on the apartment door, Miriam opened it. To my surprise, it was Ace.

“Am I interrupting anything?” she asked. 

“No, come in,” I said.

Ace did and sat down in the desk chair. It was a little odd, seeing someone so huge and powerful in a small plastic rolling chair. The awkwardness seemed to puncture even Ace’s cold exterior. She stuck her hands in her pockets and pulled out a little brown bag.

“I, uh, got you something,” she said. 

“Thank you,” I said, unwrapping it. It was a palm-sized piece of chocolate in the shape of a knife, decorated with red fondant.  _ Congrats on the Stab, _ it read. 

“Dauntless tradition,” said Ace, not meeting my eyes. “Sorry if it’s not tasteful.”

I smiled. I didn’t really see the humor yet, but I liked that Ace had gotten me something. “I’m sure it’ll be very tasty,” I said, putting it on my bedside table.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. 

“I keep having to state that I almost died because it’s begun to not feel real to me,” I said. 

Ace chuckled. “Yeah, the first time’s like that.”

“What’s it like the second time? The denial doesn’t kick in at all, reality hits you full force, and you end up a bawling mess on the floor? Because I’m really trying to avoid doing that again.”

“You’re really not wrong.”

I smacked my jaw. “Wow. I can talk at normal speeds again, that’s cool,” I observed.

“Did I miss Phoebe on painkillers?” Ace smirked.

“Painkillers Phoebe is not as fun as she sounds,” I told her.

“If you say so.”

“I cried about flowers.”

“On the contrary, painkillers Phoebe sounds like a delightful person.”

We laughed and then fell into silence. Miriam began to clean the bathroom mirror, the paper towel squeaking quietly on the glass.

I looked down at my hands. Then I looked at the bandage on my chest. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the knife. The woman’s sore-spotted skin.

“Ace?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for saving me.”

Ace grunted. “Just doing my job.”

I supposed she was. I still hadn’t really wrapped my head around the fact that not only had I almost died at the hands of a factionless woman, I was saved by one too. 

“Ace?”

“What now?”

“The woman who attacked me. Who was she?”

In the bathroom, the squeaking stopped.

“I don’t know,” said Ace.

“You’re lying,” I said. 

Most of the time I couldn’t tell with Ace. This time I could. She averted her eyes.

“Did you know her?” I asked.

“No.” That was the truth.

“But do you know who she was?”

Ace hesitated again. “I don’t know. I have a feeling I might. But I never knew her personally.”

“I did,” said a soft voice.

Miriam stood in the door, wringing her hands in her apron. When we turned, she flinched back, as if ready for a blow or a shout, but we just stared.

“You knew her?” I said.

Miriam nodded. After a second, she limped closer and then leaned against my bedpost for support.

“We...went to school together,” Miriam replied. “She was my age.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Never got one,” she said. “She called herself Lady Rose.”

She had never had a name. I had only caught a single glimpse of her face as she lay dead on the attic floor. A forgettable face, covered in dust and disfigurement and so much of her own blood. I had thought of her only as “the woman” or “the thing”.  _ Lady Rose. _

“What was she like?” I whispered. I almost didn’t want the answer.

Miriam looked at her hands, twisted in her apron. “Kind,” she said, “back then. When — when I had to leave school to work, she tried to teach me how to read. She had hope for everyone. She wanted to become an Erudite. Wanted to come back and help all us factionless kids. This was before you,” she added, looking at Ace. “Nobody from the projects had made it into the factions before.”

Ace’s eye twitched. I could tell she didn’t like people pointing out where she had come from, even Miriam. But she didn’t say anything.

“Lady Rose never had parents,” said Miriam, “didn’t have any way to provide for her, except begging the Stiffs for scraps. She shoulda gone to the sweatshops like the rest of us. But she kept going to the project school. We all thought she was asking to starve. Then later we realize she looks healthy, she’s eating, she has clothes, even though she spent the whole work day at the school. We ask and she just smiles and says it’s her secret. The kids who did still go to school said the teachers liked her a lot, so much, they giving her hugs and touching her hair.”

“God,” Ace whispered. 

But I didn’t understand. “What’s wrong with that?”

Miriam wouldn’t look up. Ace just turned away, crossing her arms like she was hugging herself. 

“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” said Ace. “Just forget it, Phoebe.”

“What? No, I want to know!”

Hesitating, Ace put her hand over her mouth. Then she murmured, “You have to swear not to tell anyone what we say.”

Now I was just confused. I wanted to ask why everything had to be so secretive, but I also really wanted to know. 

“Okay,” I said.

“School in the projects…isn’t like school in the factions,” Ace said. “It’s not a good thing if a kid’s doing well.”

“Why not?”

Ace and Miriam exchanged a glance. Then Ace said, “Because the only way to succeed in a project school is by giving something to the teachers, and factionless kids don’t have money.”

There were a few more seconds where I still didn’t understand. I wish that the seconds had lasted longer. 

I wanted to vomit. I wanted to tell them that they had to be lying, no human being would be evil enough to do something like that. But in the back of my mind I knew what I believed to be true — human beings were evil enough. But for the longest time, I refused to believe that they could exist in the factions.

“How old was Lady Rose?” asked Ace.

“I don’t know,” Miriam confessed. “She was so quiet about it, it could have started at any time. We only figured it out when she was fourteen. She told us, ‘Mr. Beauregard promised me that I’ll pass the literacy tests, then I can take the aptitude test.’ No project kid is smart enough to pass the literacy tests. But she was so sure.”

I found it hard to meet her eyes. She was blinking back tears. “What happened?”

“She turned sixteen and took the literacy tests.” Miriam wiped her eyes. “She failed anyway.”

Ace shifted, hugging herself tighter. 

“She was so angry,” said Miriam. “She wanted to take it again, she thought that it had to be a mistake, but they wouldn’t listen. She reached out to Candor, Dauntless, and Abnegation, but nobody cared. She wanted to kill all of them. She almost killed herself. I tried to leave her alone, I wanted to focus on this job and raise my son, but I couldn’t stop hearing things. She got into drugs. Started working in the red light district, only job she could get. That was seven, eight years ago.”

“But she never forgot her abuser,” said Ace.

“Is that why she — ” I hesitated, unsure of how to put it. I was going to say “wanted revenge.” But now I really didn’t like that word. Fortunately, I didn’t have to finish for them to understand. 

Miriam nodded. Then she let out a humorless laugh. “I heard she wanted to kill him with a Choosing Ceremony knife. She always liked symbolism; she was kind of a poet.”

“So Beauregard lied,” I said. “He told the police that he didn’t know anyone who hated him.”

Ace’s eyes narrowed. “Beauregard lied about a lot of things. Last night, the Candor put him under truth serum and asked the questions again. He wasn’t late at the office the night of the break-in — he was with friends in a strip club. That’s why he left his car at home, so it wouldn’t be on record that he was there. I’m sure they also know about Lady Rose’s motives for wanting him dead.”

“So they’re going to do something about that?” I asked, my voice verging on desperate. “He’s going to jail now, right?”

I wasn’t expecting the silence that came after that. Or the choked, sad laugh that came from Miriam’s mouth.

“No,” she said. “They’ll probably give him a raise.”

Ace stood so fast that the swivel chair bumped against the table. 

“Don’t say that!” she snapped. 

Miriam winced, then looked at her feet. 

But it was too late. I had heard it. “What?”

“What does it matter?” Miriam croaked. “I told her about Lady Rose. I’ve probably lost my job already.”

“You could save your job if you shut up,” said Ace.

“Stop ordering her around,” I said. “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t they punish Beauregard?”

Ace whirled around to me. “Why do you even care?”

“Because that’s not right! I thought we were supposed to uphold justice, and now we’re letting a child abuser go?”

“Phoebe, I’m on your side, I hate this as much as you do. But it’s not my place to say things, and you shouldn’t either — ”

“Why not? What do you mean, it’s not your place?”

“The fact that it’s not glaringly obvious tells me that maybe I shouldn’t answer that!” Ace yelled. “God, Stiffs really are the worst of them, aren’t they? Thinking that the factions make everything fine? Well, kid, since you’re not in class right now, here’s a simple social studies lesson — ninety-five percent of this damn city has the life that Lady Rose had. If we jailed every so-called ‘public servant’ who mistreated the factionless, every single one of those seats would be empty!”

I flinched. Miriam’s hands were over her mouth. Ace’s face was red from yelling, but then went white as a sheet. She whirled around, as if looking for someone who might be listening, then stormed out of my room to the front door and peered outside. Then she closed all the doors again. 

“You promised not to tell a single soul what I’ve said,” Ace hissed.

I nodded quickly. I realized I was trembling — I had never heard Ace yell like that, and it was terrifying. I wanted to argue. I wanted to protest with all the soundbites that I knew regarding the factionless, that if the factionless wanted a more comfortable life, they would work for it; that if the factionless wanted success for their children, they should have thought of that when they were part of the factions; that just because some Erudite teacher turned out to be a bad apple didn’t mean that the whole system was corrupt. 

But there were still so many things that didn’t make sense to me. Why it was impossible to succeed in a project school. Why Lady Rose hadn’t just told the police what her teachers were doing to her. Why Beauregard still had a job. I had never had to explain away any of that before. I couldn’t bring myself to do it now. 

“I think I want to be alone,” I whispered.

Miriam nodded and ducked out of the room before Ace or I could say another word to her. Ace lingered, her gaze darting from me to her shoes to a vacant spot on the wall.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” said Ace. “But there’s a lot more to this city than what the factions tell you. I hope you’ll understand that one day.”

She turned and left. 

I looked out the window at the Chicago skyline. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: this chapter contains heavy religious discussion. i originally planned for this just to be a bonus scene, an exploration of phoebe's struggle with her conscience and her religion, but i also feel as if this is something important that vroth doesn't really talk about. however, i understand that it can be a sensitive topic for some people. if this is the case, feel free to skip; there's not much plot here, just some character development that i didn't have the heart to cut.

The next morning, when everyone was at class, I put on a black dress and left the Institute.

Burials didn’t happen anymore. Not enough space for them within the city limits. All dead bodies were cremated. I didn’t know how fast the turn-around rate was, but I could only assume that by now Lady Rose was really, truly gone.

I walked to the church. If a faction wanted a religious center, they had their own — faction came before even religion. Abnegation’s was a small utilitarian building in the center of the neighborhoods. It was multifaith, of course, but mostly Christian, and on each inside wall hung at least one crucifix or painting of Jesus feeding widows and orphans.

Candor’s religious center was very different. It was a huge glass building with a fountain in front. The inside was spacious with lots of seating, a mix of a traditional Christian church and Jewish synagogue. Each pew had a strange hinge running along the bottom, suggesting that they might also slide into the floor to make the space a Muslim mosque. I had heard about that before. A sign near the door advertised worship times for all of the faiths and office hours for the rabbi, priest, and imam. The place was empty. 

I sat in the second pew and looked up. The stained glass windows—like everything else—were in black and white, a neutral geometric design. I had seen pictures of old churches and knew that Mary might have otherwise been there, holding the child Jesus in a swath of white. I thought of Miriam. I thought of the son she had mentioned in passing. My father had once said the mother of Jesus was only fourteen years old.

Fourteen years old. Carrying a child.

My fingers clenched the hems of my sleeves. Lady Rose looked at me every time I closed my eyes. Did anyone try to stop her? Did no one try to help her? Had I ever passed her by on the streets, too afraid to give her a scrap from my lunch?

Fourteen years old. Trading her body for a chance at a better life.

Footsteps drew my attention and I wiped my eyes. A very old man in a black robe and white collar walked out of a back room, across to the podium. He clearly wasn’t expecting to see anyone in the pews, because he startled when he saw me, then asked, “What can I do for you, my child?”

I stood. I realized that maybe I shouldn’t be here. “Sorry,” I said. “I just wanted some time to think.”

“No need to apologize,” said the man. “The Gathering Place is always open to those who need comfort.”

I hesitated. Then I walked up. 

“I’m looking for the priest,” I said. 

He nodded. “That would be me. You are familiar with the Christian church, yes?”

“Not this one, no.” I looked around. “I grew up in Abnegation.”

“A very different kind of church,” the priest agreed. “But we are all one family in Christ.”

“Can I ask a question?” I said. 

“Of course, my child.”

We sat in a pew. 

“The way I was brought up,” I said hesitantly, “I was taught that only people who believe in Jesus could be Christians.”

“Yes,” said the priest. 

“And that the only way to get to heaven was to understand that Jesus loved us so much that he died to save us.”

“Yes, that is right.”

“And...if you don’t understand it...you have to go to hell.”

The priest hesitated. Then he bowed his head, as if sensing the question on my tongue. “Yes.”

“What happens if someone never has the chance to understand?” I asked. “What if—what if the only exposure someone might have had to the message was by people who abused her? If she dies, why does she have to go to hell?”

He hesitated again, the muscles in his face tensing. Then he replied, “I know what I am supposed to say—that even someone who has never been told of a God can see Him, in all the beauty around us. That somewhere in the depths of every human heart, there is a longing for peace; a knowledge that we are not perfect, and that we cannot fix ourselves on our own.”

I opened my mouth. I had heard that argument too and did not know how to feel. But then he lifted his head. His eyes glittered in the light through the windowpanes. 

“But I don’t know if it’s within our capacity to use that against others,” he said. “We often assume that our truth is everyone’s truth, that what is clear to us is clear to the rest of the world as well. Yet there’s no way to know that. We say that all men will naturally conclude they need a Savior. Why? Because we have already concluded it. We have been raised in places full of beauty and love. We have lived in communities that encourage us to think about these things. We have had the ability to reach out for guidance when we needed it.”

“But I don’t know if everyone does,” I protested. “I thought that they did, and now I’m not sure.”

The priest nodded solemnly. “No,” he said. “Not everyone does.”

I blinked away tears. Lady Rose blinked back, her cheeks and hands emaciated from neglect. 

“It’s not fair,” I whispered. 

“I know, my child,” said the priest.

“She—this woman that I know—she spent her whole life suffering. The world took everything from her. And she tried everything to help set it right again. I know you can’t earn your way into heaven, but how is that justice? How — how can I believe in a god who would abandon someone like that?”

My voice echoed in the rafters, the question repeating a hundred times. I wanted to scream. I didn’t like this, I didn’t like doubt, I didn’t like having to question everything that I had accepted unconditionally for sixteen years. If what Ace and Miriam told me was true—that every factionless suffered like this, that there really was no way to get out—how could a merciful God let it happen?

Folding his hands, the priest closed his eyes, like he was praying. Maybe he was.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Perhaps we’re not meant to.”

“That’s not an answer,” I said, bitter.

“The Scriptures do not tell us the verdicts of every person’s life,” said the priest softly. “Hagar, mother of Ishmael, was a pagan—but God spoke to her, helped her and her son. Where is she? Judas Iscariot followed Christ for years—but he turned Christ over to the slaughter and hung himself. Where is he? We were never told whether their eternal lives are spent in paradise or punishment. I don’t believe we were meant to know, my child.”

He turned to me. His face was soft, but fissured with age. A shadow, an ancient grief, haunted his blue eyes.

“You will spend your whole life trying to understand justice, both earthly and eternal, and you never will. The justice of God is something that we cannot yet comprehend. It is a justice of wrath, of perfection, of an unchangeable need for truth. But at the same time—a justice of love, of grace, of forgiveness beyond our scope of reason. Whatever your friend’s journey, God has regarded her with not only the wrath, but also with the love.”

My mouth opened. “So—she could be in—”

“She could be anywhere,” said the priest. “But that is one of the truths that we are not yet meant to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end of act I! as per my usual pattern, there are three acts in this story, each about 15 chapters long. act II is completely written and i am several chapters into writing act III, so we're in the home stretch!
> 
> if you've read thus far and haven't said anything, i really want to hear your thoughts! i love comments and i love hearing what people have to say. my inbox is also open at my tumblr, @saltwaffle!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know that, like, nobody's reading this, but it makes me happy to write so.

The rest of my day was spent studying. Or at least, struggling in a futile attempt to study. 

Eventually I gave up and just went to the library to get a new album of music. In Abnegation, music was uncommon outside of church worship; in Candor, music was an essential study tool. I was slowly making my way through some of the digital albums available for public use in the library. I was particularly fond of an old, old artist named “Pink Floyd”. 

I checked out a pair of headphones and the digital chip for an album called  _ Wish You Were Here,  _ then sat in front of a fireplace in a corner. All around the library, initiates and law students alike studied. As I slipped on my headphones, I saw some of the Candor-born boys at a table not far away.

Sherlock was the first to notice me, but he ducked his head quickly and pretended to be reading. Brighton waved. I waved back. A few seconds later, a message popped up in my chat app.

_**B. Cole:** heyy its brighton!! _

_**P. Prior:** Yes, I can see. _

_**B. Cole:** sherlock waned me to ask you if you want o come to a party tonigh . _

_**B. Cole:** oops *wanted *to *tonight _

_**B. Cole:** my t key is kinda sticky sorry :/ _

_**P. Prior:** Haha, that’s alright, but no thank you! I have to study.  _

_**B. Cole:** cmon tomorrow’s saturday! And we won’t be out THAT lae. _

_**B. Cole:** *late _

_**P. Prior:** I thought transfers weren’t allowed at your parties? _

_**B. Cole:** usually but not this one, aletheia won’t be there. she’s getting a mani pedi with katie. _

_**P. Prior:** Is there a dress code? _

_**B. Cole:** anything but pajamas haha _

_**P. Prior:** Haha, alright.  _

_**B. Cole:** k meet you at 8 on the front seps! _

**_B. Cole: *_ ** _steps_

He left the chatroom. When I looked up, he was teasing Sherlock about something that made Sherlock bury his head in his arms. At that, Brighton reached across the table to mess up Sherlock’s hair. Then he waved at me again.

Now I had plans, I guess. 

After dinner, I returned to my room to change the bandage on my wound and apply more healing gel. The gel worked wonders — the cut had already begun to knit itself together, and the temporary stitches were magically dissolving into the new skin. I would be good as new in a couple more days, besides a permanent scar. I had been asked if I eventually wanted the scar removed, too. I hadn’t decided yet. It wasn’t like I wore a lot of clothes that showed the skin below my neck.

Then I hesitated. Why didn’t I wear clothes that went below my neck? I had begun to wear pants, ties, and the typical Candor black and white. But subconsciously I always chose clothes that covered me wrist to neck to ankle, like I had in Abnegation.

I dug deeper into my closet and pulled out a white dress. I often saw Candor women and girls in these kinds of dresses, ones with plunging necklines, pencil skirts, and pinched waists. Aletheia and Katie wore them all the time. I didn’t want to imitate them, but now I wanted to know how it would feel. They always acted so confident. Maybe dressing the part could help. I squeezed into the dress and struggled to zip up the back, unable to move my left arm at risk of hurting my cut. I eventually gave up and let it be so that I could look in the mirror. 

Instantly, I did not like what I saw. It wasn’t because I didn’t like my body, or that I was ashamed of my own skin. I had done more than a respectable share of staring at my naked body after a shower, just because I had never seen it before. I liked my shape and I was becoming more comfortable with my freckles. But the dress did something else. The V-neck exposed my bandage, which was okay, but the bodice pushed my breasts up strangely to peek out of the V, which was not okay. The pencil skirt forced me to shorten my strides and stand a certain way. When I sat down, the skirt went up, exposing half my thigh. Everything about the dress, it seemed, was designed to make me look older, more sexual, more like an object. It was as attention-grabbing as if I went out dressed in neon yellow.

And though I was growing comfortable with a little attention, this would not do. 

I ripped off the dress and hastily slipped back into my long pants. I almost put on my long-sleeved button-down, but I was still kind of curious about a new style, so I reached for a white short-sleeved shirt. Tie, then a suit vest, then a newsboy cap. I wondered, for a split second, how Ace would like it — she did seem to favor a more masculine style. Then I shook my head because that thought was shallow. I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about Ace at all. This was my night. 

I was careful to sneak past Oona’s room as I left. I was pretty sure Brighton only meant to invite me, and I didn’t want to burden the Candor-born by inviting every transfer I was friends with. So I slipped out alone. 

When I reached the front steps of the Institute, everyone was already waiting — all of the Candor-born initiates minus Aletheia and Katie, plus a few law students that I had seen around. When they saw me, they all grinned and waved.

“Great! Phoebe’s here.” Brighton clapped his hands, jumping to his feet. 

“Hi,” I said shyly, waving back. “Where are we going?”

“No clue,” Brighton shrugged. 

We set off with the group down the street. 

“It’s some sort of initiation ritual, I think,” Sherlock said. “Usually, it’s just for those with older siblings in the Institute. But they’re making an exception after what happened at Beauregard’s house.”

My stomach knotted at that name, but I managed to hide my grimace. “Oh. Gotta love a pity party.”

“Not a pity party,” said a sunny-haired 2L. “An olive branch. We tend to treat transfers like crap — unworthy until proven worthy, you know. But honestly, you made a lot of us reconsider it.”

I still wasn’t sure how to feel about the compliments. All I had to do was not die. “Oh...thanks?” 

The 2L nodded, then offered her hand. “I’m Amalka, by the way.”

I shook her hand as we walked, but I didn’t grip hard enough and I let go too quickly. I doubted I would ever improve my handshake. It still felt unnatural to grasp hands with strangers.

“I’m — ” I started to say, then stopped. She had literally just said that she knew who I was. I was too used to people not knowing.

“Phoebe, yeah,” Amalka laughed. “Not to brag, though, but I knew you before the incident. Ace mentioned you.”

My eyes widened. “She what?” 

I was less surprised that Ace was talking about me with law students and more surprised that she talked to the law students at all. Which said something about how little I knew about her, but still.

“What did she say?” I asked.

Amalka smirked. “She said you were a Stiff. And that you’re nosy.”

My cheeks warmed. “Fair,” I said, “but — she talks to you?”

“She was hired when I began level one. I guess we would’ve been in the same initiate class, had we been in the same faction. She had this whole stone-cold badass act up, even though she had no idea how the Institute worked, so I helped her around. We smoke in the yard after her shift’s over.”

The gears in my head started churning, working through the math. So that was two years ago, minus a few months — not three, like I’d heard. Ace was eighteen. I frowned, because I wasn’t sure why I was concerned about that. But it seemed like a good thing to know.

As a group, we kept walking east, down to Michigan Avenue and away from the Candor central square. We began passing through the common district, an area of administrative buildings, restaurants, and retail shops that formed the core of the city. On a Friday evening, the streets were alive with people. I couldn’t help but keep my eyes open as we passed government buildings, trying to catch a glimpse of someone I knew — old neighbors, maybe even my parents. 

But before we could travel too deep into the common district, our group stopped at a café. The sign read  _ Antigone’s Ambrosia _ .

When I stepped inside, I was hit by the strangest blend of scents I had ever smelled. Coffee, cake — and alcohol. Somehow it worked. It was one of those quirky little places that I had always wanted to go inside but never had the time or the occasion to indulge in. There were rows of cases heaped with pastries and an entire glass freezer showing off tubs of ice cream in every color. The walls were decorated in a thousand shapes of liquor bottles. The clientele seemed like mostly Candor, with a few introverted Erudite in the corners.

Amalka stepped up to the front and asked, “Reservation for thirteen, party room?”

“Amalie Cole?” asked the barista. 

“Yup.”

“Follow me, please.”

We followed the barista through a door to a quieter room, with pool tables and a circular booth large enough for all of us. Thankfully, I managed to get on the end, between Sherlock and Amalka, who sat in a chair.

The barista handed out menus and took our orders. I was going to have just water since the law students were paying for all of us, but Amalka noticed and made me pick something else. I ordered a nonalcoholic drink called “blood of the golden ram”, which was almond milk with a bunch of spices and gold cake sprinkles. It came in a white mug and was so beautiful I didn’t want to drink it, but when I did take a sip, I didn’t want to stop. 

About a half hour later, after a pleasant chat with the law students about classes, the barista came around with a new, curious tray — thirteen tiny glasses and a huge clear bottle. The law students all started grinning as they passed out the glasses. 

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Shot glass,” said Amalka. “We’re playing a classic Candor game called  _ Never Have I Ever _ .”

One of the 3Ls stood up and clinked his spoon against his glass. The murmuring died down and we all looked to him. “Amalka is right,” he grinned. “For those of you who have never played,  _ Never Have I Ever  _ is a game about the truth. Think of it as a practice test for the Full Unveiling. Here’s how it works: we take turns counterclockwise. I say, ‘Never have I ever…’ and say something that I’ve never done. If you  _ have  _ done it, you take a shot. Clear?”

“Crystal,” said a few initiates. 

“That’s alcohol?” I whispered to Amalka, suddenly nervous. 

“Phoebe’s never drank alcohol before,” said Amalka loudly. 

“Well, then you better keep your fingers crossed,” said the girl filling up our glasses. When I got my glass, I tentatively sniffed it. The crystalline clear liquid had a thick, pungent smell, like burnt apples. But it was also kind of enticing. 

“Alright, let’s begin,” said Amalka, raising her shot glass. “May the truth set you free.”

It turned out that I didn’t need luck to avoid taking a shot. We started with Amalka, so I’d be last. Her turn was: “Never have I ever gone to class hungover.”

Many of the law students took a shot. So did a few initiates. 

“Thank you for your candor,” said Amalka, grinning.

I realized this might be a long night. 

“Never have I ever smoked in the bathroom.” A lot of people took a shot. “Never have I ever had a one-night stand.” A few people took a shot. “Never have I ever skipped class without a legit reason.” Not surprisingly, everyone took a shot. After every person’s turn, they might tease other members of the table or ask about a particular thing, and always ended by saying, “Thank you for your candor.”

The whole time, I just stared at my forlorn, untouched shot glass. By the time it was Sherlock’s turn, about half the table looked a little sick, but otherwise eager for more dares. I also caught some glances towards me. I was the only one who hadn’t taken a shot yet.

“Never have I ever,” Sherlock hesitated, “kissed someone.”

Everyone groaned and took a shot. Except, of course, me. Sherlock mumbled an awkward “thank you for your candor” before averting his eyes.

Now everyone was really looking. “Um,” I said. “Never have I ever...had alcohol.”

A few people immediately drank their shots, but others looked at me with something that I could only assume was pity before following along. 

But Amalka wasn’t having it. “That’s it,” she said, taking her shot. “Normally, we finish after going once ‘round the circle. We’re doing one extra turn. Never have I ever — solved a case that the pros couldn’t solve.”

The eyes were back on me. Tentatively, I brought the glass to my lips. Then, like taking medicine, I tipped it down my throat. 

It burned. But in the cheering from the group and the grin that rose to my face, I barely noticed.

* * *

Afterwards, we played pool and cards and drank a lot of water. Water would help prevent hangovers. I was told I wouldn’t have a hangover after a single shot, but I just wanted to make sure. I felt sleepy and slower than I normally did, which both frightened and soothed me. I didn’t want to be like the 1L boy who stumbled out the door and faceplanted on the sidewalk. 

After a while, the party began to die down. The pool games became less riotous and more focused. Some people slipped out and presumably went home; some of the initiates and the law students sat in the booth and started having intense philosophical debates over mugs of water and ice cream. I noticed Sherlock standing by an unmarked door for a while before glancing around the room and ducking through it. He didn’t return for a while. 

Curious, I followed. I stepped out into the cool night air into a dark alley. I stood at the top of wooden stairs. Sherlock sat there, nursing an herbal tea. 

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up. “Oh. Hey, Phoebe.”

“Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

He scooted over on the stairs and I sat. We stared out at the city alley, at the cracked pavement and puddles from last night’s rain showers.

“So that’s a Candor party,” I exhaled.

Sherlock nodded.

“Somehow, more alcohol than I was expecting,” I added.

“We think of it as a more fun form of truth serum,” he said.

“Fair.”

He finished his tea. His leg bounced, like it always seemed to do, and he folded his hands.

“I know I shouldn’t be nervous for the Full Unveiling,” he admitted, “but getting closer to it, it’s harder than I thought it would be.”

I had tried not to think about it. Thankfully, I’d been sort of distracted in the past few days, what with how I had almost died. But my stomach curled into a dense knot at the mention of it. The test that might reveal to the whole faction that I was Divergent. Whatever that meant, at least.

“Are you nervous?” asked Sherlock.

“‘Course not,” I replied.

His brow furrowed. “That was a lie.”

He’d caught it, quick as a whip. “I have the most boring life,” I told him. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Is that what you’re nervous about?”

Now I hesitated. Was I? I thought I was nervous about the Divergent thing. But maybe Sherlock had a point. I was utterly paralyzed of not belonging. Every single shot tonight had just reinforced that I didn’t and never would. 

“Maybe,” I said.

“I mean,” said Sherlock, rubbing the back of his neck, “it’s okay if you don’t do every single thing that all of them do. I’ve only done a couple. And I grew up here.” 

“Sure,” I shrugged.

He could tell that I wasn’t satisfied with that. He picked up his teacup, looked in as if he expected it to have magically refilled, then set it back down.

“Listen, Phoebe...I…uh…”

“Yeah?”

“I have something to get off my chest.”

“What?”

“I — ” His eyes darted wildly, and he shifted, and he folded his arms in front of him. “This might be one of the hardest truths I’ve ever told.”

“Trust me,” I said, thinking back to my multiple trespassing violations, “it cannot be that bad.”

“Okay.” He inhaled. “When I said that never have I ever kissed anyone, it was partly to see how you would respond. I wasn’t sure how to ask you a few days ago, on the park lawn. I didn’t think you had. But I wanted to know. After what happened in the attic, after, after almost seeing you die, I became terrified. I realized that I might have never been able to ask again. I know it sounds selfish — me asking a question, you almost dying, those two things are wildly incomparable. But I talked it through with my therapist after the fact and he said I need to be honest with you. Not that I didn’t already want to. But I think it’s time now. Life’s too short to wait.”

I was speechless.

I literally didn’t know what to think. I normally didn’t like letting myself jump to conclusions. But just like in Beauregard’s house, there I went — one clue, two clues, conclusion. Sherlock wanted me at this party. He wanted to know about my romantic status. 

“You like me?” I said softly.

He gave an awkward half-smile and a small “heh.” Which was a pretty thorough answer.

I looked at my shoes. “Oh,” I said. “That would be a first.”

“Someone liking you would be a first?” said Sherlock, confused. “What are you talking about? You’re — ” His eyes darted and his face began flushing pink. “ — You’re  _ so  _ pretty. Even when I saw you in the halls at school, wearing the scarf.”

“No way.”

“I’m not lying. Look at me and tell me I’m lying.”

He turned and finally met my eyes. The evasion from before had been nerves, it seemed, because he was being honest now, honest as I could tell. 

“You’re not lying,” I said slowly. 

He nodded.

I shifted my hands to my lap. I had often dreamed about the moment when I would get this sort of information. Now that I had it, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. 

“So,” Sherlock coughed, “I just wanted to let you know. That if you haven’t kissed anyone — well — it’s okay. Because I haven’t either.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

A silence passed between us. He coughed again.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“I think I have a lozenge somewhere in my pocket, would you like it — ”

He placed his hand on my bare arm, and I was too stunned to jerk away. 

“I’m not sick,” he said. “I mean, I want to kiss you now.”

Oh.

Now I really,  _ really  _ wasn’t sure what to do with the information. I felt like I was holding the hot potato in that game we played as kids, and I saw the adult reaching over to turn the music off — I wanted to toss the potato anywhere but my lap, but didn’t want to be known as the polite Abnegation girl who smacked an unsuspecting child in the face with a bean bag. I didn’t want to kiss Sherlock. I had thought about it, then had come to the conclusion that I didn’t like him that much or in that way. I wished I could tell him that my parents rarely held hands even in our own home. I had trained myself to avoid all displays of affection because they raised me to take them seriously.

But Sherlock was also very nice and very polite — even for a Candor-born. He looked at me like a puppy, soft and unassuming.

“Okay,” I said. 

I wasn’t really sure what to do. Thankfully, Sherlock seemed to have some idea. He moved his hand to cover mine and I only flinched once before letting him hold it. Then he closed his eyes and leaned towards me. Our lips met in a strange sort of  _ squish.  _ I almost pulled back too soon. 

So instead, I focused on trying to make the kiss better, doing all of the things I had seen people do, like tilt my head and close my eyes and squeeze his hand. It just ended up making things weird.

He pulled back and let go of my hand. I tried to subtly wipe my lips, but he saw it.

“I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” I replied.

“That’s a lie. I’m really sorry, I won’t do it again. Unless — unless you want to. But if not — it’s not my business to tell you to kiss me.”

He meant it. He wouldn’t meet my eyes anymore, but I could tell. 

“Thank you for your candor,” I said.

* * *

Sherlock and I walked back to the Institute together, our hands in our pockets. 

We talked some. About the Beauregard case. About us. He wanted a relationship. I didn’t, but I also felt bad. He told me not to feel guilty. I wondered aloud if it was just my upbringing that was making me so hesitant about a relationship, and he admitted that he didn’t know. I suggested that he could try asking out another girl. Maybe Oona. Leanne seemed to like him, too. 

It was past midnight by the time we arrived back. To my surprise, Ace was sitting at the front desk — the night guard. I knew there was a night guard. I didn’t think it would be Ace. 

“Keys and ID?” she said. 

We handed them over and she checked. She raised her eyebrows when her cool dark gaze landed on me. 

“Have either of you been drinking?” Ace asked. 

My instinct, ashamedly, was to lie. But then Sherlock said, “Yep. Both of us.”

Ace smirked. “Nice.” She didn’t even mark it down or anything. I guess she just wanted to know. 

She locked gazes with me again. I was first to break it. The last time we had spoken, it was the conversation with Miriam about Lady Rose. It still lingered bitter on the tongue.

Then Ace said, “You going out with the Candor kids now, Stiff?”

My heart lightened a little. I had begun to really hate it when other people called me that, except for Ace. Somehow, it reassured me that everything was okay with us, that we could go back to normal. Whatever “normal” was between us, at least. 

“Abnegation kids generally don’t do apple vodka shots,” I said.

Ace laughed. She had a nice laugh, I noticed. The sarcastic ones were harsh and barking, but this one had music, a unique timbre that I had never heard before.

“Oh, that’s rich,” she said. 

She handed us back our keys and ID cards. As she did, my fingertips brushed hers. There was a strange shiver. I met her eyes. 

A flurry of emotions flickered between us. I saw on her face a deep melancholy, a thousand words unsaid. I let my eyes pass over her quirked nose, her full lips and beautiful strong jaw, her scruffy black hair that looked feather soft. The kindness in her deep amber eyes. Things might almost be back to normal.

But I suddenly felt that nothing would ever be the same. Our conversation, begun with Miriam in my room, wasn’t over. It had simply taken a recess. In the locking of gazes I saw a challenge, a puzzle, a suffering, a conflict, and a mystery. The water would boil over soon. 

For I now understood something clear as day — I could not be in love with Sherlock. I was already in love with Ace. 


	17. Chapter 17

I wasn’t sure which of the two was more alarming for me. The fact that I liked a woman, or the fact that I liked a Dauntless.

With the second fact, I realized after a while that I wasn’t actually surprised. I was Divergent. In a way, I was a Dauntless too. The Dauntless had always held a mystique for me, a particular addictive flair. I knew that inter-faction relationships were discouraged — marriages were illegal, for that matter — but part of me didn’t care. Even my identity was dangerous; could it really get worse?

As for the first fact, though, that was the hard part.

I had never questioned my sexuality before. I liked boys. I had had crushes on boys at school; I had seen particularly cute boys and wished that they could talk to me. In another time, I might have even reciprocated Sherlock’s desire with enthusiasm. Yes, maybe I didn’t like the thought of marriage — maybe I had always been terrified of Abnegation’s standard for me, that of the obedient wife and selfless mother. But that was every girl my age, as I had been told. The little butterflies that filled my stomach when I looked at a cute boy would soon grow, would lead me to step into the courting scene, would enable me to submit to marriage, would open my heart to carrying children. 

And suddenly, it was for a girl. A woman. Someone brave and cool and interesting and mature and beautiful, despite — no, _because of_ — her scar and short hair and powerful form and strange charisma. Someone who had saved my life.

She was everything I had been warned to avoid. Selfish, unfriendly, asocial, hot-tempered. A hellion. Thinking about her made my chest ache in a way that I had never felt before; only admitting it to myself gave any relief. It had to be torture, it had to be wrong. My church had never avoided the topic of homosexuality. This had to be the torment of sin that I had been told about. 

But I wanted it, I wanted to be around her so much. 

It took me hours to fall asleep. My healing injury meant that I had to sleep on my back with my arms at my sides, which I hated more than the devil. So now, not only my spine but my conscience kept me awake. 

I woke up at six in the morning to thunder. It was raining furiously outside, and so dark that I thought it was still night. It might as well have been, because six was much too early. Oona was doing her hair in our bathroom, two elaborate braided buns.

“You were out pretty late,” she said softly. 

I stopped in the doorway, confused. “Huh?”

Her lip tightened. She refused to meet my gaze in the mirror. “You told me that we were going to study together last night.” 

“Oh.” I felt a sinking in my gut. “I totally forgot — ”

“It’s fine,” she said, even though it was obvious that it wasn’t.

“Oona, I’m really sorry, I — ”

A pin slipped out of her fingers. Then she broke down crying. 

Immediately I was at her side, mumbling apologies. But before I could get far, she sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to me. “It’s just really hard. Not being happy all the time. I’m fine. I’m getting there.”

“What?”

“In Amity — there’s a serum. In the bread. It helps us all stay happy.”

Another sob bubbled in her throat and she threw herself at me in a hug. She was so tall that I couldn’t do anything but accept it. Her impossibly long hair spilled over my shoulder. 

“I — I’ve been trying to get off it slow — but I ran out yesterday and — and — and I heard you leave, and then I saw you outside with the Candor, and when you came back — I — I saw you with Sherlock and — and I just realized,  _ God,  _ I’m so lonely, I’ve felt lonely for such a long time but just hadn’t realized it. It’s so awful. I hated you. I’ve never done that before.”

I let her cry. After a while, I said into her hair, “It’s okay. We’re…all going through things that we didn’t before.”

She sniffled. After a while, she pulled back and whispered, “Really?”

I inhaled. Everything in me protested to deflect and not say anything. 

“Sherlock’s still single, if you were wondering,” I said softly. “I think I’m gay.”

Oona’s eyes widened. She looked at her feet. Then she wiped her tears and hugged me again. “Oh my god, we have so much to talk about,” she half-laughed. 

We sat on my bed and talked for a long time. She told me about her struggles and I told her about mine. I asked her if she was going to counseling — Amity and Abnegation usually had a couple transfers between them, and I knew a few neighbors who needed extra support after transferring. Oona said she hadn’t, but she knew that she was clinically diagnosed with depression and had always needed an extra dose of the peace serum. I helped her find the student counseling services website on her computer. 

In return, she asked me how I was. I told her everything, from what I had been brought up to believe in Abnegation, to what I felt now, to what happened last night with Sherlock’s kiss. I carefully avoided saying that my feelings were for Ace. I didn’t want to back myself into a corner with anything involving other factions, lest the Divergent thing come out. But Oona didn’t ask who I liked. I felt like she knew that I didn’t want to say. I appreciated that. Few Candor understood the concept of not wanting to say something. 

“Are you feeling okay about it?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I told you. Abnegation doesn’t support gays.”

“Well, you’re not in Abnegation anymore, so why are you worried?”

I hesitated. “I feel like I’m letting my family down. I already let them down once when I transferred, and now I’m doing it again by — by liking girls. I know they’re — not my family anymore — ” that really hurt to say “ — but I still can’t stop feeling like this.”

Oona looked down. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I wouldn’t know how to respond.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Ideally I’ll manage to ignore it until after exams are over,” I said, “but more likely, I’ll obsess over it until it drives me insane.”

“If you want,” said Oona, “you can go to counseling with me.”

It was a genuine offer, but for some reason, it made me laugh. “Thanks. But I think I have to work through this alone.”

She hugged me. I was getting more used to casual friend hugs. I liked them when they were with her.

“You’re never alone,” she said.

We pulled back. Outside my window, the storms were dying down. Mottled sunlight peeked through the clouds.

“I’m going to get dressed,” I told her. “I know a restaurant we should visit.”

She finished her hair, I got ready for the day, and we pooled our money for a trip to Antigone’s. In Abnegation, we didn’t have much by way of money; we just had everything we needed. But in Candor, we received a certain amount of credits each week just for being part of the faction. I told Oona about the drinks I had sampled and all of the pastries that I couldn’t wait to try. By the time we left the apartment, we were in high spirits, all animosity from before washed away like the rain.

Until we stepped outside and, from the front steps of the Institute, saw the crowds.

A group of adult Candor, impatient to start their day’s work, had gathered around the front doors of the Merciless Mart. Oona and I ran across the street and joined the throng. I was shorter than almost everyone in the crowd, so I couldn’t see what they were looking at. Oona’s view was obscured by a hundred men’s hats.

“What’s going on?” I asked a nearby man.

“They’re not letting us inside,” he replied, clearly frustrated. “Vandals ruined the door.”

“Vandals?”

“ATTENTION!” bellowed a deep voice. Through the forest of hats, padded shoulders, and hair in tight buns, I saw a male Dauntless climb onto the stair railings and stand tall above the crowd. “ATTENTION, CANDOR! The north entrance will be closed this morning. Please enter through the south doors by the river.”

“What?!” a woman shrieked. “You can’t make us walk all the way around!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before wearing stiletto heels to work,” the Dauntless sneered. “This is not a suggestion! This entrance is closed. Get out of here.”

The Candor grumbled. Eventually, they began to dissipate, not wanting to argue with an angry Dauntless. As they did, I broke away from Oona and pushed against the current to get closer to the doors. I bumped into a man holding coffee and he cursed at me. Another woman touched my shoulder and said, “Did you hear the Dauntless?” but I pushed her hand off.

I reached the doors. Someone had taken a blowtorch to the handles and melted them until the doors couldn’t open. Red spray paint was plastered all across the black metal. Huge angry letters, smeared from the morning rain, but unmistakable.

_ JUSTICE FOR LADY ROSE.  _

_ JUSTICE FOR THE ANGEL GIRLS.  _

_ JUSTICE FOR THE FACTIONLESS.  _

-

That afternoon, I called Miriam to my room to clean up a spill. When she arrived, there was no spill, just a takeout cup of coffee from Antigone’s. I closed my door behind her, sat on my bed, and motioned to my desk chair. 

“Miriam, we need to talk,” I said. 

She limped over and sat at the edge of the seat. I handed her the cup of coffee, which she sipped hesitantly. 

“Did you hear about the vandalism at the Merciless Mart?” I asked. 

“No,” she whispered, her jaw tensing. 

That was likely a lie. “Did you do it?”

She relaxed minutely. “No.”

That was likely the truth. “Do you know who did?”

She hesitated. “No.”

Also the truth. But a truth with a catch. 

I let her drink the coffee in peace for a while before asking, “Why would they do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Miriam, I swear to you on my life, I won’t tell anyone what you say here, you’re safe. I just want to know.”

She hesitated again, wiping her mouth with the edge of her uniform sleeve. After setting her coffee aside, her hands drifted to her apron hem and bunched it up in her clenched fingers. 

“People down there, in the projects,” she began, “they’re scared. The Candor and the Dauntless stormed the red light district two nights ago. They wanted to know if Lady Rose had allies. People who would’ve helped her break into Beauregard’s house, maybe other people with plans like hers.”

“Did they find them?”

“No,” said Miriam. “But they shot four girls anyway.”

The blood drained from my face. “What?”

Miriam bit her lip. “Four working girls in one of the clubs. A Dauntless shot them. Three died and one was wounded as she tried to run, but they killed her too, so there wouldn’t be witnesses. But a fifth girl got away. Now everyone knows.”

“Did anything happen to the Dauntless?” I asked, almost desperate. 

I wanted to hear that the soldier was arrested. I wanted to know that it wasn’t like Beauregard’s case. But deep down, I knew the answer I was going to get. Miriam shook her head. 

“Dauntless kill factionless every day. It’s all the less skilled and older Dauntless on street duty, and they’re all so angry, all the time. They’ll shoot at anyone.”

“That’s terrible!” I burst. “You can’t live like that!”

She shrugged. “You — you get used to it. My mum taught me, I taught my son, never run, don’t put your hands in your pockets…never look like a threat.” 

Her fists tightened around her apron. Her voice wobbled. 

“But the girls, they weren’t threats, they were on their knees with their hands over their heads — sixteen-year-old girls, they were angels, they were crying and begging, there was nothing they coulda done to hurt the man! Nothing and he shot them! And all the others just watched! And only because one of the girls knew Lady Rose’s name!”

Miriam shook her head and covered her face, sobbing into her hands. Part of me wanted to comfort her. The other part of me was too shocked to move. I felt that if I did, I would throw up, or break down crying too, or run out of the room. 

“And it’s my fault,” I whispered.

Miriam looked up. “No — no…”

“I was the reason Lady Rose died,” I said, numb. It didn’t even feel like I was saying it. “If I hadn’t been up there, she would have gotten away with everything.” With killing Beauregard. Like the man deserved. “And she would still be alive.” And the Dauntless would never have stormed the projects. “And the girls would still be alive.”

“You don’t know that,” said Miriam. “There were other groups that might have found her.”

I smiled sadly. “But it was me.”

She looked back at her apron. “Yes.”

“So that’s what was different this time,” I said. “The four girls who died — they were murdered. That’s why the vandal wanted justice.”

“Everyone wants justice,” said Miriam. “But justice isn’t for people like us.”

“Justice is for everyone,” I replied. 

“Not the justice that I know.”

“What happened — that isn’t right, Miriam! There has to be something we can do!”

Her breath hitched. “I could be fired just for staying here. I don’t know what they would do to me if they knew what I’ve said.”

She had a point. Miriam had too much to lose. A job. A son. I wanted to ask how old her son was.

“Well, there has to be something  _ I _ can do,” I said.

Miriam looked up.

“Yes,” she said. “Study for your exams and stay out of factionless business.”

“No, I can’t do that — ”

“Look at Ace. She grew up in the projects, and she’s finding it real easy to stay quiet about our problems. Ask her how she does it, if it’s hard for you.”

“It’s not easy for her! She hates this injustice as much as you do, as much as I do — ”

“But she’s also instrumental in it,” said Miriam coolly. “A pawn. A cop. A Dauntless. They all mean the same thing.”

My throat tightened. “That’s not true!”

“Who killed Lady Rose?”

“You can’t — ”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway.” Miriam let out a hostile, barking laugh. “We all knew Ace was lost from us, even if she hadn’t chosen to join the factions.”

My breath hitched. 

“Why?” I asked. 

Miriam met my eyes once more. But this time, there was a coldness, a venom that pricked and held me still. I couldn’t look away. Wisps of her silvering hair slipped from her bun, wreathing her face in a crown. 

“Because she’s too much like you,” said Miriam. “Because she doesn’t understand that for justice to strike, it has to kill the ones that hold it back.”

The factions. To rid the injustice dealt to the factionless, one had to destroy the factions. 

“That would mean anarchy,” I rasped. 

Miriam tilted her head. 

“Anarchy, or rebirth?” she asked. 

I didn’t know what to say. She sipped the last of the coffee and stood, steadying herself on my desk. 

“Thank you for the drink,” she said. Her voice changed. It had been growing stronger and clearer, as if revealing a different, hidden Miriam, a Miriam who stared into my soul as if judging my fears. My fear of uncertainty, of change. Of a destruction of peace. I had seen a Miriam who held anarchy in her mouth like a prayer and a curse. Until now, when her voice wavered and lowered until it was the trembling whisper of before. 

She limped to the door, picked up her basket of cleaning supplies, and bowed her head. 

“Whatever happens, ma’am…it don’t concern you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like miriam. she scares the shit out of me.
> 
> currently testing out barnes and noble's personal printing press because what's the point of rewriting a book if you're not going to make your own printed and bound copy to keep on your own shelf


	18. Chapter 18

We had our midterms that week. 

The midterms would cover all the material we had learned in our four classes thus far. Then we would be ranked by our scores. They were meant as benchmarks, to show us how well we were doing and how hard we should study for the final exams. 

I didn’t study for the midterms at all, which was dumb. But honestly, it was all I could manage to continue going to class. 

My sleep schedule had never been worse. My mind was just too full of things to let me simply  _ stop  _ thinking for eight hours. My dreams were troubled, nightmarish at times. Lady Rose was there, every time. Sometimes she was holding me, plunging a Choosing Ceremony knife into my chest. But most of the time, she was just there. Staring. Blood streamed from her eyes like tears. 

At the advice of Oona, I started writing my thoughts and nightmares in a journal. It was a cheap little black book that I kept in what I called the secret pocket, a torn flap inside my computer bag that let me hide things between the protective layers of the bag. I was pretty honest in the journal, and the word “Divergent” appeared more than once, so it was better to be safe than sorry. For good measure, I wrote backwards, right to left across the page in an illegible mutation of cursive. I was left-handed and writing backwards had always been easier.

The journal helped me organize my thoughts. But it also kept me up worse. I had begun staying up until midnight or later every night, furiously scribbling my every thought and inkling into the journal. I did, indeed, scribble a lot. A handful of pages were just nonsensical doodles or wild roses where I let my pen run in circles until the ink bled through. It looked like the work of a crazy person. I didn’t know if I was crazy. I felt like it, sometimes. 

I think my friends could tell. Even Judge Bandele pulled me aside on Sunday and asked if I was alright. I told him, truthfully, that I didn’t know. 

Our midterms were on Tuesday and Wednesday. We would have most of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off before resuming class on Sunday. The exams would resemble our finals. All of the initiates, transfers and Candor-born alike, would take every exam at the same time. 

Tuesday brought our Legal Procedure and Logical Reasoning exams. Both of these were in the typical exam format, pen and paper with multiple choice, short answer, and long essay questions.

We took them not in the Institute classrooms, but in the Merciless Mart itself. For some of the initiates, it was the first time they had been inside. We were brought up to a place that I knew rather well — the Department of Academic Integrity. Irene’s department. I saw her once, handing a packet of exams to Judge Morris. Even though she couldn’t see me, and I didn’t say anything, she lifted her chin as I passed by and I wondered if she could sense me. 

The Exam Room, and everything about the format of Candor exams, was designed to test not only our academic skills but our honesty, as well. The Exam Room’s walls and low ceilings were made of mirrors. The desks were arranged very close together and tilted at an angle, as if to make it easier for someone to look over one’s shoulder and see the answers. The exams were all the same, with all the same answers and pages, and all multiple choice answers would be filled out with easy-to-see bubbles. A loud air conditioner meant that no one would overhear two students whispering answers to each other. And there was no test proctor, just us in the room. 

It was the cheater’s dream exam. Except for one catch. On Thursday morning, after all four midterms were taken, we would each be put under the truth serum in a miniature version of the Full Unveiling, to be asked whether or not we had cheated on the midterm exams. Anyone caught cheating would be kindly excused from initiation. A factionless life lay just beyond a quick peek at the ceiling mirrors.

This fact alone was enough to scare most of us into complete honesty. Near the end of my Legal Procedure exam, my neck began to ache from looking down, but I was so scared of accidentally peeking at my neighbor’s paper that I didn’t dare to stretch. After the exam was over and we all filed out of the room, twenty people let out a chorus of sighs. 

We went to lunch, then all filed back into the room to do it again for Reasoning.

The day left me so mentally drained that I had no trouble sleeping that night, at least. I fell asleep in my clothes without bothering to pull the covers over me.

The Argumentative Technique exam, the next day, was much different. Ten of us would take the Arguments exam while the other ten took the Investigative Technique exam, and then we would switch.

Each of us were paired with a volunteer law student or young lawyer. I had Annabeth, a redheaded woman who worked in the Integrity offices. We were quite the matching pair and I wondered who in upper management had the sense of humor. Annabeth took me to a small, bare room with a table and a one-way mirror. We were being watched by two other volunteers, who would later convene with Annabeth and determine my grade. 

On the table were two files — one for a Mr. Plaintiff X and a Miss Defendant Y. Annabeth flipped a coin and I chose tails. I was given Miss Y. I would argue on Miss Y’s behalf in standard debate structure. The objective wasn’t necessarily to win, as Annabeth was much more experienced than I. It was just to defend Miss Y to the best of my ability.

The case was pretty simple, but in an actual trial, could swing either way. Miss Y was an Erudite scientist who hired Mr. X as an intern for a six-week project. Before the project, Miss Y had Mr. X sign an agreement of hire. The agreement said that Mr. X would only get paid at the completion of the project, provided that Mr. X did not get terminated. The agreement also outlined reasons for termination, particularly, three instances of being tardy to work. Mr. X was tardy three times in the first two weeks, but Miss Y did not fire him. On the sixth and final week of the project, Mr. X was fired without pay for three tardies. Mr. X then sued Miss Y, claiming that she had ignored the tardies in order to get free labor, then terminated him right before she was supposed to pay him. Miss Y’s defense was that she did not keep a careful eye on the interns’ clocked hours until she calculated the hour logs at the end of the project, so she did not know about Mr. X’s tardies until then.

I didn’t think I did very well. I pointed out that neither Mr. X nor Miss Y were lying, so Miss Y did not intentionally keep Mr. X for free labor. I also argued that if Mr. X was concerned about termination, he would have brought up the matter to Miss Y in the first two weeks. However, his silence and continuing to work suggested that he hoped Miss Y would overlook the tardies. While it was terrible that Mr. X had to work for free for six weeks, he also tried to deceive her.

I petered off in the closing statement and kind of left my argument hanging. But Annabeth congratulated me, and it wasn’t just flattery — Candor weren’t much for flattery. So maybe it was okay. 

After lunch was my final exam, Investigative Technique. Judge Morris called it “the escape room exam”. A funny name, but which, like everything Morris said, was delivered with such deadpan monotone that I couldn’t help but get a shiver down my spine. 

We were each locked in a small room alone. I would have thirty minutes to escape. The room was a one-room apartment and looked as if someone might have lived in it. To open the door, however, we had to find two keys.

The first key was easy — as soon as I turned on the light in the bedroom, something felt unbalanced. The light on one side of the room was dimmer, less complete. I dragged a chair over to the center of the room and removed the frosted glass cover from over the lightbulbs. There, taped to the outside of the third bulb, was the first key.

The second key took a little more time. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere by ripping the place apart, so I took my time, searching for things that stood out to me. Unusual hinges, false drawer bottoms, disrupted dust patterns. As the timer ticked down to five minutes left, I finally got it — the stove. When one turned each of the four knobs, the flameless burners would glow red and begin to emit heat. All except one, which glowed, but wasn’t hot. I placed my hand on it and the knob popped off in my hand. On the inside was the key. 

This one I was sure I had done well.

Until I unlocked the door and saw that I was sixth to finish. Aletheia, standing next to a scoreboard that listed her name first with a score of eight minutes, gave me a smirk. I casually turned away from her, put my hands behind my back, and flipped her the bird.

I thought it was over. Until I returned to our apartment later that night after dinner. I found Aletheia in my bathroom, filing her white-tipped nails over our bathroom sink.

“Hey,” I said. “This is mine and Oona’s bathroom.”

“Mmm...I prefer the lighting in here,” she replied, admiring her nails.

“Well, I gotta pee.”

Aletheia smirked. It was a small expression, but her glassy lip gloss seemed to exaggerate it to cruel proportions. Facial makeup, especially foundation, was strongly discouraged in Candor, but it didn’t stop girls like Aletheia from using clear lip gloss or nail polish anyway. “Don’t they teach you manners in Abnegation? It’s more ladylike to say, ‘May I use the restroom?’”

“Okay,” I said. “I gotta piss like a racehorse. May I use the restroom?”

Aletheia met my eyes in the mirror. 

“I know what you are,” she said.

Briefly, my heart jumped to my throat — she couldn’t possibly know I was Divergent. I wondered if I had misplaced my journal, but no, it never left my computer bag, which never left my person.

“Really now,” I said evenly.

“Is it not obvious?” Aletheia asked, turning to face me. “You’ve tried to scrub it off, you got rid of that ridiculous scarf, but that’s Abnegation pride. Still thinking you’re better than everyone else.”

My shoulders tightened more, but now for a different reason. “Get out.”

The smirk stretched. “God, you  _ stink  _ of it. Maybe that’s why you got stabbed. The factionless smelled your stink and didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”

“Get out of my bathroom,” I said.

“Or you’ll what?” Aletheia leered. “This isn’t the Hub. I don’t have to follow a Stiff’s orders here.”

“What is wrong with you?” I snapped.

“What’s wrong with  _ you _ ?” she retorted.

“My thing is that I don’t care about you, but you decided you hate me anyway! Your thing seems to be that you get off on power trips, but I don’t know, I’d hate to assume!”

“I already know I get off on power trips, and I need to deal with that in my own time,” said Aletheia, taking a step closer to me. “But when you say you don’t care about me, I think you’re lying.”

“I am not a liar.”

“But you’re pretty full of yourself. All Stiffs are.”

“Did you forget the part where Abnegation hates pride? As in, that’s their main thing?”

“On the contrary.” She tilted her chin. “I think you love it.” 

I stepped back. I didn’t mean to. But a knot suddenly tightened in my stomach, and I was unable to respond except a weak, “What?”

Aletheia’s smirk turned into a full smile.

“You’ve never heard that before? That self-hatred is just another form of pride? All your moral superiority, pretending that you’re so righteous and perfect and  _ different _ in everything you do, did you not notice that it’s because you’re obsessed with yourself?”

“That’s not true.”

“Please. Abnegation is crawling with people like that. People like you. People so obsessed with keeping up an image of self-sacrifice that they just never stop thinking about themselves, thinking about how other people see them. And yeah, I said image, because I know it’s not real. I see how you defend the poor factionless, saying ‘oooh, they can’t provide for themselves, you have no right to treat them like they’re inferior’. And all while sitting on thrones above the rest of us, thrones built on the backs of factionless slaves. Don’t kid yourself. Your service, your morals, your selflessness?  _ Bullshit _ . Abnegation’s government is designed to create a suffering poor.”

“Abnegation was founded to help the poor!” I yelled. “You don’t know anything!”

Aletheia nodded. “I know that you always think you’re right.”

“Hah, and you don’t? You claim that you care about the factionless, when the only reason we ever spoke to each other was when you were yelling at Miriam for cleaning our room!”

“I am not always right,” Aletheia shot back. “And I don’t care about the factionless. The only thing I care about is the survival of the fittest. But you can’t believe in both.”

“You think I believe in both?”

“Our society was constructed around meritocracy, Phoebe,” said Aletheia. “Only the best deserve to live in the factions. Am I wrong?”

I was silent. She wasn’t.

“I think that meritocracy is a wonderful thing,” she continued. “It’s the one idea that every single faction can agree on. Even the Amity. Even the Abnegation. Especially the Abnegation — you guys coined the concept, didn’t you?”

Again, she wasn’t wrong. In the harsh white light of the bathroom, her platinum blonde hair was nearly white; her washed-out blue eyes were a bright silver. She locked on my gaze and didn’t look away.

“But meritocracy is based in pride,” she said. “To maintain a meritocratic system is to love the ideal of pride. And to claim that one is truly absent of pride while maintaining such a system is — what? Hypocrisy? Duplicity? Whatever it is, it doesn’t belong in Candor. ”

“Get out of my fucking bathroom,” I snarled.

Aletheia raised her eyebrows at my language. I had never said the f-word before, and I think she could tell. But she seemed to have made her point because she brushed past me to the door. 

“I’m just saying — ” she grinned “ — that if you want to be a prideful bitch, don’t bother hiding it. Trust me, it’s more fun this way.”

I slammed the door.

Now alone, I leaned against the bathroom sink and gasped. The stench of her nail top coat still hung in the air. She had left the bottle on the countertop. I hated the smell, I hated her. I hated the violent struggle inside me that Ace and Miriam and Lady Rose started, and I hated Aletheia for adding just more fuel to the fire.

Was I really prideful? Was I really a liar? Was Abnegation really corrupt?

Furious, I knocked the nail polish bottle to the floor. I wanted to break it, but it landed on a plush white mat and rolled to a gentle stop. I scooped it up and held it to the light — it wasn’t completely clear; it shimmered slightly, like a liquid mirror. It looked expensive. 

I unscrewed the cap, poured all of the polish into the toilet, and threw out the bottle. I wish I could say I felt guilty for even a moment.

I didn’t.

* * *

Thursday was the interrogation in the Integrity Offices. Friday was a free day. Saturday was Visiting Day. Normally, I floated exhausted through my days and weeks, too tired to reckon what was important, but this weekend had me on edge every morning when I opened my eyes.

My first encounter with truth serum, that Thursday, wasn’t as bad as I thought. All twenty initiates and our professors sat in the room. One at a time, an initiate would receive the serum and answer the questions. 

Irene did all of the asking. I wondered if she had requested to do it personally, on my behalf. It didn’t seem like the sort of task that the head of a department would care about.

When it was my turn, I was led to a chair in the center of the room. Irene’s assistant positioned a syringe over a vein in my neck, inserted the needle, and pressed the plunger. I barely felt the pinch. What followed was what it might feel like to freeze the ocean over — one second, adrenaline rushing through my veins. The next, my blood like lead. Then my brain went silent. For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt calm. My thoughts did not race. My eyes stared only at Irene’s black glasses. 

She cleared her throat and began. 

“What is your name?”

“Beatrice Prior.”

“And you go by Phoebe?”

“Yes.”

“Are you an initiate at the Candor Institute of Law and Investigation?”

“Yes.”

“While taking any of your four midterm exams, did you cheat in any way?”

“No.”

“Did you help one or more of your peers cheat in any way?”

“No.”

“Did you attempt or commit any act of academic dishonesty not previously mentioned?”

“No.”

“Thank you for your candor, Miss Prior.”

And then it was over. The assistant marked my responses. I returned to my seat.

Afterwards, as we filed out of the room (no one had cheated, so nobody was getting kicked out) Irene stopped me while packing up the truth serum equipment.

“A moment, Miss Prior.”

She continued packing up the equipment with her assistant, taking her time until we were the last three people in the room. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a white business card. 

“This is my information,” she said. “I will be contacting you about your internship within the week.”

For a moment, I was confused. An internship? But she placed the card in my hands and squeezed, and then I remembered. The Full Unveiling. Irene said she would be in contact about preparing me for it. Presumably, that meant that she would teach me how to lie.

“Okay,” I said.

She nodded, took her things, and left with her assistant, the echoes of their shoes and her cane gradually receding. I looked down at her card. It was completely white, without even ink. Instead, the letters were embossed, raised above the paper so that one could only read it through the letters’ shadows.

_ Irene J. McCandless, Esq. (she/her) _

_ Executive Director _

_ Department of Academic Integrity _

_ ijmccandless@candorint.gov _

_ “For justice is blind; not by nature, but by choice. Law without love is cruelty.” _


	19. Chapter 19

The rest of that day and the next were quiet. I sat in my room and wrote in my journal. Sometimes I went out to the courtyard or to the library to check out more music. Friday, I had lunch with Brighton and Amalka. I cleaned my desk. I helped Oona organize her closet. 

That night I went to Antigone’s with Ravi. I told him that I liked girls. He congratulated me, bought me a few glasses of blueberry wine, and answered some of my questions about what he called “the queer community”. I found out that I might not be gay, I might be bisexual, since I still liked guys. The word comforted me. I liked having a name for the thing that I was. 

I was so good at distracting myself that I fell asleep normally and soundly that night. But as soon as my eyes opened the next morning, I remembered. Visiting Day.

It took me an hour to dress. I just wasn’t sure. Miriam had taken the head scarves away a long time ago. But when I looked in the mirror and saw my bush of red hair, I felt naked. The outfit I had laid out was a black long-sleeved shirt, sweater vest, and a white tie, something I might normally wear to class. Now, it was too dark, too masculine, too unique. I tried a dress again. Then a long skirt. None of it worked, none of it was right. I finally gave up and went with my first outfit. They wouldn’t approve.

But who cared if they approved? I set my jaw. This was my faction now. These were the clothes my faction wore. And most importantly, these were the clothes I liked to wear.

The apartment was silent. When I went down for breakfast, so was the initiates’ section of the dining hall. We all knew that we might step outside and search every face and never find one that belonged to us. As I nibbled halfheartedly on a slice of toast, Judge Morris walked in. Unlike usual, he was without his black judge’s robe and simply wore a suit.

“Transfers,” he announced to us, folding his hands in front of him. “I wish to give you some advice before you step outside. If, in the event that your families do come to visit you…” 

He scanned our faces coolly. The statement was neutral, but there was a defined mark of skepticism in it.

“...you may find it helpful to remember this. You have heard it said that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. While we in Candor acknowledge that old attachments are difficult to break, we also encourage you to think critically about how you address these attachments. Each of you decided that the pursuit of your true self overruled the desire to conform to your family’s expectations. It would be...disappointing to see any of you falter over that decision. Are we clear?”

A chorus of transfers murmured, “Crystal,” in response. It was indeed very clear. We were Candor. We needed to act accordingly.

On my way out of the dining hall, I saw Oona and Sherlock ahead of me, Sherlock laughing, probably at a joke Oona made. I didn’t try to catch up. For one, I felt like it would be a mistake to interrupt them. For two, I wasn’t sure what I’d say other than an awkward, “Wow, anyone else scared out of their wits for no reason?”

I wasn’t alone there, at least. I saw Ravi by the water fountains, clutching his stomach. I suddenly felt guilty—I only had one thing to be afraid of; Ravi had two. Changing his faction and changing his entire identity. I sort of had that too. I hadn’t decided if I was going to tell my parents about being bisexual. But at least that was one of those things that could go unsaid. Ravi, however, had already come out to everyone. He had shaved the sides of his head and wore a man’s suit. His hot-button topic was already out in the open. 

I stopped just before the front doors and held my breath. Then I went out.

Clusters of families stood in the plaza underneath the statue of Themis, the woman with the scales. Everywhere was black and white, Candor families with Candor initiates. They still looked intimidating to me—a father in a white trench coat and fedora, a mother with a monocle and perfectly-shined loafers, children in three-piece suits, a loving family unit.

To my chagrin, I saw Aletheia’s family first. She stood next to a portly older man and a squat, chubby woman with mousy brown hair. Neither of her parents looked like her. She was arguing with them, but the smirks on her and her parents’ faces suggested that it was all in good fun. Did they know what kind of person their daughter was? 

Then again...what kind of person was I?

Across the plaza, Ravi found his way to a woman in a blue dress. She didn’t look old enough to be his mother, but she had the same thick eyebrows and cinnamon-colored skin. Leanne had mentioned him having a sister once; maybe that was her. 

Oona’s mixed family was there, a flock of Amity yellow next to a reserved cluster of Candor. Oona grinned as she embraced an Amity woman with hair even longer than hers. She looked just like her mother. Her father, a nervous lawyer, was herding Oona’s many stepsiblings away from his own wide-eyed children. As strange and split as the family was, Oona’s mother and father both seemed happy to see her.

Why even bother looking for my parents? They didn’t want to see me. Every smile I saw, every laugh I heard just made my heart ache a little more. I turned to go back inside.

Then I saw her. My mother sat alone in Themis’ shadow, her hands clasped in her lap. She had never looked more out of place, with her grey apron and grey jacket buttoned at the throat, her hair in its simple bun and her dark face placid. I started towards her, tears jumping into my eyes. She came. She came for me.

I was almost running. She turned, and for a second her expression was blank, like she didn’t know who I was. Then her eyes brightened. I crashed into her, the biggest and tightest hug I had ever given in my life.

“Beatrice,” she whispered. She ran her hand through my hair.

 _Don’t cry,_ I told myself. I held her until I could blink the beads from my eyes, then pulled back to look at her again. I smiled with closed lips, just like she did. She brushed my cheek.

“Look at you,” she said. “You’re so beautiful, Sunshine.”

“I know!” A laugh burst from my lips. I had heard other people say I was beautiful, Oona, Ravi, Sherlock. But from my mother, I felt like the weight of the world was rolling off my shoulders.

She chuckled. “And confident.”

“I suppose I am,” I said. 

“Are you happy?

I nodded. “I was just nervous. That you wouldn’t like...all of this.”

I gestured to my clothes and hair. But Mom just hugged me again.

“All of this _is_ you. I love it, Beatrice.”

We stayed like that for a while. Her cheek rested against my chest, against my healed scar. I wondered if she could feel the ridged skin through my clothes. Then she pulled back and put her arm across my shoulders.

“Tell me how you are,” she said.

“You first.” The old habits had returned. I wanted her to speak first. The conversation couldn’t focus on me for too long. I had to make sure she didn’t need anything. 

“Today is a special occasion,” she said. “I came to see you, so let’s talk about you. It’s my gift to you.”

My selfless mother. I didn’t deserve gifts, not after I left her and my father. But I just nodded.

I walked with her back inside, where a few other initiates were showing their families around the Institute. My mother’s eyes traveled up the impressive marble columns and crystalline ceilings, in the same way that mine had on my first day. I took her to the sunny courtyard and we sat by a little fountain. I leaned my head on her shoulder, glad to be close. The last three weeks had been more affectionless than I realized. Even with the hand-shaking whenever I met someone new and the many hugs from Oona and even the kiss from Sherlock, I almost felt like my home in Abnegation—where touch was sparing, but tender—had more.

“Just one question.” I felt my pulse in my throat. “Where’s Dad? Is he visiting Caleb?”

Mom shook her head. “Your father had to be at work.”

I looked down. I hated that I knew she was lying. “So he didn’t want to come.”

She inhaled. “He’s been—selfish, lately. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love you, I promise.”

I stared at her, stunned. My father—selfish? More startling than the label was the fact that Mom gave it to him. I couldn’t tell by looking at her if she was angry. After so long being around people who wore their hearts on their sleeve, I was surprised that I couldn’t. But she must’ve been; if she called him _selfish,_ she must have been furious.

“What about Caleb?” I asked. “Will you visit him later?”

“I wish I could,” she said, “but the Erudite have prohibited Abnegation visitors from entering their compound.”

“What?” I demanded. “That’s terrible. They can’t do that!”

She hesitated. “Tensions between Abnegation and the other factions have been higher than ever. It was—” She hesitated again, then said, “Nevermind.”

“What’s the nevermind?”

Mom gave me a wry smile. “I almost forgot that you’re learning to ask questions for a living.”

“Judge Bandele, my Arguments professor, says I’m one of the most stubborn people he’s ever met, and he’s practiced law for thirty years,” I grinned.

She laughed—a genuine, musical laugh unlike any that I had ever heard from her. “I believe it.”

“So—what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say that it was difficult for me to get here, too. Candor and Abnegation have never liked each other, just like Erudite and Abnegation.”

“But that doesn’t mean they can forbid you from seeing me and Caleb!”

“They can, if letting me in poses a threat to the unity of the faction. Things—” She looked over her shoulder, then sighed “—things are changing, Phoebe.”

“You know my name,” I said, stunned. My new name. 

“I have sources,” said Mom. “I heard about your new name. And I know about this.” She pointed to my scar, hidden under my shirt and vest. “It was very brave of you, and I couldn’t be prouder.”

But only dread grew in my stomach. 

“What’s changing?” I asked.

“I wish I could say.” I couldn’t tell if it was a lie. But I couldn’t tell if it was true. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. And there’s nothing you can do, either. Like I said, I’m sure it will pass.”

I wasn’t so sure. Whatever _it_ was, I knew in the pit of my gut that it wouldn’t just pass.

But I didn’t want to spend the entirety of Visiting Day interrogating my mom. So I told myself to drop it and looked down at the garden of white lilies. One of them had snapped off along the stem and lay forlorn in the dirt. I picked it up, dusted it off, and tucked it behind Mom’s ear. She smiled and glanced across the courtyard. For a while, my gaze fixated on two little marks on Mom’s earlobe. Tiny, circular indentations. They’d always been there, but I could never figure out what they were.

Then the door opened and Ace stepped in. I knew she usually worked Saturdays, but I was still surprised to see her. She sat on a rock, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it.

“That’s our head of security,” I said. I leaned closer to Mom and added, “She’s...kind of intimidating.”

“She’s _cute,”_ Mom replied.

I found myself nodding without thinking. Then I did a double take. “You know that I’m—?”

“Sunshine.” Mom put her hands on my shoulders. “I’ve known you like girls probably longer than you have. It’s okay.”

She accepted me. She was okay with it. The tension seemed to melt out of my shoulders. I managed a relieved smile. 

And then Mom got a devious glint in her eye and stood up too fast for me to stop her. “Let’s go say hi.”

“Wait—Mom—”

Ace looked up as Mom strolled towards her. To my surprise, instead of grumbling and acting aloof like I expected, Ace’s eyes widened and she stood quickly. Mom offered her a handshake.

“Hello, my name is Natalie,” she said. “I’m Beatr—Phoebe’s mother.”

I had never seen Mom shake hands with anyone. Ace eased her hand into Mom’s, looking stiff, and shook it twice. The gesture looked unnatural for both of them.

“Ace,” she said, her voice lower than usual. “Nice to meet you.”

“Ace,” Mom repeated, smiling. “Is that a nickname?”

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. What _was_ her real name? “Your daughter is, um, doing well here. She’s good at arguing.”

I met Ace’s gaze. My mom just laughed. “Always has been. So you oversee her training?”

“No, ma’am, I just work security,” said Ace.

“Perhaps they should change that,” said Mom, raising an eyebrow. “You were the one who protected my daughter from the thief, weren’t you? Maybe a little Dauntless-style training would help her stay out of such messes.”

My face was so hot I felt it might explode. “Mom…”

Ace’s face was red too. She looked at me, and her eyes moved down my face, from nose to mouth to chin. Then she said, “In my experience, if Phoebe wants to get into a mess, she’ll find a way.”

That made Mom laugh, too. She really seemed to like Ace, which I was glad about, but which also made me wonder. I had never imagined—I _had_ imagined, just a wild fancy, about what it might be like to bring Ace home as my significant other—that Mom would like her.

“That’s my girl,” said Mom. She tilted her head. “Ace...you look familiar.”

“The scar makes me hard to forget, ma’am,” Ace replied, her voice suddenly colder.

I touched Mom’s arm, trying to warn her that she might be stepping into sensitive territory. But I also kind of wanted to know how this would play out.

“No,” Mom frowned. “I could swear I’ve met you before. Did you ever work around the Hub?”

“I tend to avoid the Abnegation,” said Ace tersely.

Mom just nodded. “Many people do, nowadays. I don’t take it personally.”

Ace’s shoulders relaxed minutely, but hints of red still lingered in her face. She pulled her cigarette back up to her lips to hide it. “Well, I’ll leave you to your reunion now.”

Mom and I watched Ace leave. She found a tree and slumped down under it, taking a long drag from her cigarette. The smoke was mesmerizing, hypnotizing, as it twirled up into the sun. 

I wish I didn’t understand so keenly why Ace hated Abnegation. I had tried to forget what Aletheia told me—I had really tried. But now it was impossible to look at Ace and not see injustice. I wondered how she could still stand to be around me anymore.

But it was nice of her to at least talk to my mom.

“Is she always like that?” Mom said.

“Worse,” I replied.

At least she’d made an effort.

We decided we’d had enough of the courtyard and stepped back inside. In the heat of the summer, it seemed that many people decided they would rather reunite where there was air conditioning. My eye caught on Oona and Ravi and their families.

I first introduced my mother to Oona, and Oona introduced us to her two families. The parents of both seemed to have given up in keeping Oona’s Amity stepsiblings and the Candor stepsiblings separate, resulting in a group of six children under the age of eight all marveling over the Candor stepbrother’s computer game. Mom liked their family. I thought them fascinating as well, and they liked me and my mother in turn.

But Ravi’s family representative was very different. When he introduced me to Priya, his older sister, she gave me and my mother only a cold, bitter smile. She didn’t bother to shake our hands. 

“Ravi, you didn’t tell me that you were friends with an Abnegation girl,” said Priya. She said the last words like one might say “a feral rat”.

Mom pursed her lips, and of course, didn’t say anything. I bristled. 

“Phoebe’s just as much a Candor as I am,” said Ravi, scowling. 

“Oh, of course. But don’t you know who _she_ is?” She points at my mom. “She’s a councilman’s _wife_. She runs the ‘volunteer agency’ that supposedly helps the factionless.”

“And what about it?” I snapped.

“I’m just stating facts.” Priya shrugged. “Facts shouldn’t be offensive. What else do I know? Oh, that your volunteer agency is a disguise for the fact that Abnegation doesn’t actually want to help the factionless. That the factionless population is actually twice the size of what Abnegation tells us it is? That Abnegation protects bastards like Thomas Beauregard from prison because it fits their pretty little system?”

A cold hand wrapped itself around my throat. What?

“Priya, what is wrong with you?” Ravi cut in. “This isn’t time for politics.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mom quietly. 

“Don’t apologize, Mom,” I said, my voice shaking.

“No, let her continue,” said Priya. “She should apologize.”

My hands unwittingly curled into fists. I didn’t care that there were people all around. “If you say another word to her, you’ll regret it.”

Priya smiled smugly. “And what are you going to do? Have me arrested? Oh wait, you’re not Abnegation. Are you going to talk me to death instead?”

My mother touched my shoulder. I knew what she was telling me— _don’t engage._ So I breathed in, and out, and in again. I closed my eyes. 

When I opened them again, I was smiling.

“You’re right. Candor only fight with words,” I said. “But I’m not Candor yet, and I really want to punch a bitch!”

Mom’s hand squeezed my arm so tight I almost cried out from the pain. But I still managed to give Priya a nasty glare as Mom dragged me away.

“Tell me somewhere we can talk in private. Where nobody will walk in,” she said.

“The roof, I guess, but there’s better locks now—”

She walked with me, fast, towards the elevators. Once inside, she let me press the button to the top floor. We rode in silence. Once at the top, I led her up the stairs and Mom looked at the door. Ace had followed up on her promise to make the door secure, adding a type of lock that I couldn’t get open. I had tried. 

“See? It’s locked,” I said.

“Well,” she sighed. 

Mom looked over her shoulder, saw that the stairwell was indeed empty, and reached up to her bun. Then she pulled out three hairpins and began to bend them into shape. I recognized the shapes immediately.

“Mom, you can pick locks?!”

With all the ease of an expert, my mother inserted the makeshift picks and began to work. “Don’t announce it to all of Candor, sunshine,” she said.

Within a minute, the door was open and we stepped onto the roof. Mom ensured that the door wouldn’t lock behind us before closing it. Then she half-followed, half-dragged me towards the bench and sat me down. 

“Mom, what are we doing here—”

“I said no questions about me. And I meant it. How are you really doing, Beatrice? What happened with the factionless woman?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “My cut’s all better. They put stitches on it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Mom. “I meant—what has happened to you since then? Has anyone talked to you?”

I thought of the graffiti on the Merciless Mart door. I knew it was there because of me. I didn’t want my mother to worry. But it made my stomach sick to think of lying.

“My housekeeper,” I said. “She’s factionless. She knew Lady Rose. She—she said that the Erudite schools, in the projects—they’re—”

“That they’re inhumane,” Mom finished. “That they mistreat their students and make it impossible to join the factions.”

For a moment I was speechless. The Erudite project schools were under Abnegation jurisdiction. I had almost forgotten that my mother helped run them; she probably knew Thomas Beauregard personally. Horribly enough, it had been Priya who really sunk the point in. Erudite had little control over the Low-Income Child Education Board. But Abnegation did. And my mother knew.

“Beatrice—Phoebe,” said Mom, taking my hands in hers, “I didn’t think I’d have to tell you any of this. But you’ve chosen a faction where everything is out in the open and nothing is, at the same time, and I know that it can be confusing. I know that you have probably heard things that have led you to question your past. I know that you have learned things that make you feel—torn.”

“It’s not true, is it? About Beauregard? About what he did to Lady Rose?” My voice wobbled. I sounded like a child on the brink of crying.

But my mother just bowed her head. It was all the answer I needed. 

“Why?” I demanded. “How could you do this?”

“Beatrice, it’s not like I could change things on my own.”

“But the things that Erudite’s been saying about us—” _about you_ “—it’s true? That we’re tyrants? Is our system really that broken?”

“Beatrice!” she snapped.

I fell silent. Just like I had been raised. But after the initial fear, I felt a spark of defiance in my chest. I looked away. 

Mom inhaled. “I’m sorry for raising my voice. The truth is, the faction system has never been as simple as we make it out to be. It’s easy to teach children that the faction system is best for society. But we have reached a point where this is no longer—practical.”

I was growing impatient. My mother liked philosophical platitudes just as much as the Amity, and I wasn’t planning to sift through them. “Mom, just tell me what you mean.”

“I’m saying that Abnegation has begun to tear itself apart,” said Mom. “So has Erudite. And Candor. Even Dauntless and the Amity. In every faction, there are generally two trains of thought: one that wishes to preserve the factions as they are, and one that calls for change. For—a rebirth.”

I thought of Miriam. _Anarchy,_ she had said.

“In each faction, this debate has taken form in different ways.” Mom stood up to lean against the wall, looking out at the skyline. I joined her. “Your father and I—though it’s terrible to say—we almost symbolize the conflict in Abnegation. Your father wants things to stay the same. He wants peace. He’s always wanted peace like that, you remember.”

I remembered. There was a time when Caleb and I used to fight like stray cats. Some of the reasons were petty, some were serious. But my father never cared about either. Just told us to forget the reasons and pretend we were fine.

“But I’ve been working with the factionless for over twenty years,” said my mother softly. “I’ve never encountered a facet of our system that I haven’t questioned.”

“Why haven’t you done anything?”

She hesitated. “I’ve been a coward. I’m too self-conscious to be brave.”

I was quiet. Aletheia’s voice came back to me— _Abnegation is full of people who only think about how other people see them._ I didn’t want to believe it. I had hoped that seeing my family would reassure me that I was right and Aletheia was wrong. But here my own mother was, admitting to just that same cowardice. 

Mom shook her head and continued. “Erudite has undergone the most violent split. Many younger members are beginning to think like Priya—that the factions have been complicit in crimes against thousands of people. Those are the journalists who keep releasing the statements against Abnegation. I think that if you sat down and spoke with Priya, you would find that you actually agree with many of the things she has said.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said automatically.

She smiled sadly. “No. You would.”

It was like she could read the conflict within me. 

“People like Priya are calling for a full renovation of the faction system. They point to abusers like Thomas Beauregard and say that these people shouldn’t go unpunished; that we should make it easier, not harder, for factionless children to take the aptitude tests.”

“But Dad said that Jeanine was releasing those statements,” I said. “I thought all of Erudite supported her.”

Mom nodded. “Jeanine approves all Erudite publications, yes,” she replied. “But something else is going on. Jeanine doesn’t want the factions gone. Some of the journalists have even attacked her for supporting Beauregard. For whatever reason, she’s letting them discredit her—maybe because most of the pieces are against Abnegation, so it wouldn’t be worth it to censor the criticisms of Erudite—I don’t know. But she’s planning something, Beatrice.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I—I wish I knew.”

She blinked hard, and I knew that she was about to cry. My mother and I were too alike. I cried too often when I was frustrated. I pulled out a white handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully. She tried to give it back, but I folded her hands around it.

“I have one more question,” she said. “Have you been in contact with a woman named Irene McCandless?”

I startled. “How did you—”

“I know that she was your aptitude proctor,” said Mom. “You were the student who was sent home early. She swore under oath of law that she had reported your results truthfully. But that’s not right.”

“She's Candor,” I said neutrally. “She wouldn’t lie.”

Mom gave a thin smile. “Would she?”

Yes. She would. 

“Beatrice, I need to know. What were your aptitude results?”

Irene’s warning pulsed in my head. _Don’t tell anyone._ I wanted to echo what I’d been told to say—Abnegation. But Mom knew that it wasn’t right. She would know if I lied. I didn’t want to lie.

I met my mother’s eyes. Deep brown like warm coffee, framed by a dark smudge of eyelashes. She had lines around her mouth, but other than that, she didn’t look her age. Those lines always got deeper when she hummed. She used to hum as she washed the dishes.

This was my mother.

I could trust her.

“They were inconclusive,” I said softly.

“I was afraid of that.” She looked down at our hands. “Many children who are raised Abnegation receive that kind of result.”

“There’s other Di—”

She pressed her hand to my mouth, cutting me off. “Don’t say that word,” she hissed. “Ever.”

So Irene really was telling the truth. Divergent was a dangerous thing to be. But I still didn’t know why. Or what it meant to be one.

“I need you to stay in contact with Irene, okay?” said Mom. “You can trust her.”

“But she’s a liar, Mom—”

“If being a liar makes you a bad person, then don’t bother trusting me.”

She squeezed my hands, so tight that they hurt. My heart hurt too. This might be the last time I ever saw her, and it was spent confused and doubtful and arguing. 

Mom looked over her shoulder at the door, as if it might open any minute. Then she looked down at the plaza below us. We could hear distant conversation from the families reuniting, laughter and friendly arguing. When Mom turned towards me, her jaw was set. 

“There’s one last thing I want you to do,” she said.

“I know,” I said, bitterness creeping into my voice. “Keep out of trouble. Focus on passing initiation. Stay in my lane.”

Her lips quirked up. “Heh. They like to tell you that, don’t they?”

I looked up, my eyes wide.

Her hand floated to my cheek. Then down, to the scar above my heart. I placed my hand over hers.

“I want you to be safe,” said Mom. “I do. If I could carry you away from all this crazy that’s happening right now, just to let you have a normal life, I would want to. But the world is changing. It’s etched in your skin. And I know that inside, you don’t want to stay inside where it’s safe.” She inhaled. “So I want you to do what you think is right.”

I blinked hard. I was about to cry. My mother brushed a curl of my hair behind my ear, then kissed my cheek.

“I have to go,” she said. “It will make you look better if we don’t seem as attached.”

“I don’t care how I look to them,” I replied.

“But they’re still looking,” she said. “Be careful, sunshine.”

She walked away. I was too stunned to follow. At the door, she turned and said, “And tell Irene to take a break for me, alright? She works herself to death.” Mom smiled a strange, twisted smile, and added, “I love you, you know.”

And then she was gone.

I sat alone for a while, the hot sun burning my neck. Almost without my permission, my hand went to the wallet in my pocket and pulled out a business card. _Irene McCandless._ I knew where I had seen the last name before. When I was young, I found one of my mother’s old ID cards in a junk drawer, from before she was married to my father. Her name had been Natalie McCandless.

Mom and Irene were sisters.


	20. Chapter 20

That afternoon, I went back to the apartment while everyone else spent time with their families. Looking out the window, I saw Oona and her family — her strange, illegal, two-sided family — walking down the street with snacks and drinks from Antigone’s. 

I closed the blinds and put in my headphones. 

I spent a lot of time thinking. Listening to music used to seem like all I could do at one time, rendering me unable to do anything but listen to the ethereal synth hums and deep drum pulses. But now it carried me away on thoughts, drifting, the Endless River. 

If Mom and Irene were related, where did they come from? Was Irene an Abnegation transfer? Or was Mom a Candor transfer? Or did both of them transfer from somewhere else, like me and Caleb? If Mom transferred at all, why did she choose Abnegation? Did she love its peace, its routine, its goodness — all the things I missed, when I let myself think about it?

She had told me that she sometimes wondered if she made a mistake. Now a transfer myself, I understood this on a completely new level. She had to have transferred. I had no grandparents, aunts, or uncles in Abnegation. For that matter — perhaps my father was a transfer, too. Perhaps it was hereditary to bounce between factions, generation to generation, unsettled, uncertain, unsatisfied.

I buried my face in my pillow. The only question now was where Mom and Irene first came from. I tried to rule some of the options out. The unfamiliarity with which Mom held herself in the Institute suggested she was not from Candor. She never cared too much for the Amity, but that could go either way. I couldn’t imagine Mom ever coming from Erudite — but I could imagine Irene.

Ace had once said that she didn’t expect an Abnegation to like picking locks or trespassing. Two traits that I had apparently inherited. 

Could my mother be Dauntless?

I doubted Irene would tell me. I wasn’t even sure if she’d admit to being Mom’s sister. It was like nobody wanted to tell me anything, afraid that it would get me into trouble. 

Joke’s on them. Not telling me something was the surest way that I go out and find the trouble myself. 

All the families were to leave by six. When I went down to dinner, I found the dining hall louder than this morning, but with lower spirits. Discussing our family visits was too painful, and none of us wanted to be seen crying and homesick in front of the whole initiate class, so our midterm grades were all anyone could talk about that night. 

Though the midterm grades had no impact on our standing in Candor, they were calculated exactly like the finals. These grades would tell us how we were doing now and how much we needed to improve before the finals. Each exam would be averaged into one cumulative percentage. In order to pass Candor initiation, one had to get an average of 85% on the finals.

“Hey, at least it’s not Dauntless initiation,” said Lars at the table. “Here, in theory, everyone could pass initiation.”

“How’s it work in Dauntless?” Sherlock asked. Despite being Candor-born, he had taken to sitting with us transfers, next to Oona. 

“Bunch of fighting. Military training. It’s hardcore, a couple people die every year. And then only the top initiates become full members,” Lars replied. “The rest are offered the choice to be put on probation or to leave the faction.”

“Define ‘probation’,” I said.

Lars’ face bunched up in a frown. “It’s no better than leaving,” he said. “Street patrol for five years, disciplining the factionless. Once you’re done, you can go through initiation again, and if you fail, back to the streets. You can repeat the cycle as many times as you want, but the longer you go, the harder it is to break out. You get too old. Or you get addicted to drugs.”

I thought of Miriam. Of the angel girls. So that’s the sort of person who killed them — an angry, disillusioned half-Dauntless, trapped in a desperate downward spiral. 

“That’s...terrifying,” said Oona, her eyes wide. 

Lars shrugged. “Terror doesn’t do much for them, I guess. What about Amity? Is it just sitting around, singing and picking fruit for six weeks?”

Oona laughed. “Something like that,” she said. “My mom always said that it was the best time of her life — and only a prologue to the best life anyone could ever have. But more than that, it’s about forging relationships, becoming a more content version of yourself, and leaving behind any worries or burdens of your past life. So everyone’s initiation is a little different. Some people need more of the singing and fruit picking; other people need time to sit and talk through their feelings. It’s six weeks of personalized therapy.”

The way she described it, she almost sounded wistful. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. What I’d give for the chance to drop all my worries at a door and never look back. Sometimes, with how little I respected peace and harmony, I wondered if I really had an aptitude for Amity at all — but other times I looked at myself and was horrified by how stressed I was. If anyone needed six weeks of therapy, it was me. 

“I’m guessing nobody fails out of that,” Ravi muttered. 

“You’d actually be surprised,” said Oona. “Exploration of the self is a lot of work, a lot of time and reflection. At the end, they take simulations of things that they have admitted to be burdens or anxieties, and they have to overcome them peacefully. Every once in a while, someone finds it hard enough to leave.”

No kidding. I had been working on that self-exploration thing almost nonstop for three weeks and all I had gotten out of it was total confusion and a crush on Ace. 

“I think what Ravi’s saying is that it’s his turn to talk,” said Lars, grinning. He punched Ravi’s arm. But Ravi didn’t seem in much of a mood to make the usual light of it. 

“Erudite is almost like Candor’s,” said Ravi tersely. “Bunch of classes and tests. At the end, you take an IQ test, and you submit some sort of thesis. But it doesn’t matter how good your thesis or test scores are if your IQ isn’t high enough.”

“What’s high to them?” asked Oona. 

Ravi stabbed his sirloin steak. “High enough that I already knew I’d never pass.”

He was definitely angry about what happened with Priya. I wanted to apologize. But I wasn’t even sure if he was mad at me or mad at her. To be safe, I could only assume both. 

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” said Sherlock. “I get it. I…actually wanted to transfer to Dauntless, but look, I’m blind as a bat. Sometimes fate just says no.”

Ravi shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Why Dauntless?” said Lars. “Is something about ‘only the top initiates pass’ not scary enough?”

Sherlock shifted, pushing his glasses up his nose. Though he’d always tell the truth, I had learned about him, it was never easy. 

“I didn’t think I’d make it this far in Candor initiation either,” he admitted. “When Candor kids are — just kids, all we hear about from our parents is the Full Unveiling. It’s this big deal. Sometimes we hear about the exams, but we’re told they’re not that important. Most of us don’t even know that they can determine whether you pass or fail until the first day of initiation, you saw how some of the others reacted.”

“Ha, I remember. Aletheia just about crapped her pants,” Lars snickered. That got a laugh out of Ravi, finally. 

“Basically my reaction too,” Sherlock nodded. “See, I found out early. I was a terrible student in Mid-Levels, so my parents pulled me aside and said, ‘If you don’t get good grades, you’ll never be able to pass the pre-law exams. And then you’ll have to go to Abnegation...or even Amity.’ They made me cry.” He hesitated, then looked apologetically at Oona and me. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Oona smiled. “In Amity, I’ve heard parents tell their kids to behave or they’ll be sent to Candor.”

Ravi snorted. “Jeez.”

By then, everyone was looking at me. “What?” I said.

“Abnegation’s initiation,” Oona prompted. “Amity’s, I can get why that could scare children. What’s so bad about Abnegation’s?”

“Six weeks of community service, every day of the week, minimum of eight hours a day,” I said.

“Isn’t that all that Abnegation does anyway?” asked Sherlock.

I shook my head. “Initiation works a little differently. After initiation, you can choose what kind of jobs you want to serve — like if you’re a good office worker, you can work in the Hub; if you’re good with kids, you can apply to the faction nursery. But during initiation, you’re only told the day’s job when you wake up, and they’re completely random. Whatever needs to be done that day. So you have to be pretty versatile.”

“How do you fail?” asked Oona.

“What?”

“Do you just not do the jobs well enough, or…?”

“Nobody fails initiation,” I said. I almost sounded surprised to myself, like I hadn’t realized that until now. Maybe I hadn’t. “We find a place for everyone.”

“That’s gotta be why people choose it,” said Lars.

That stung a little. But I shrugged. “Guess so.”

Ravi looked back down at his plate. Then, so did I. 

After dinner, I tracked him down going to his room. “Ravi, I need to say something,” I told him, pulling him into the common area. 

“We both do,” he said quietly. I’d never known him to be quiet. 

“I’m — sorry. For what I said to your sister today.” I wasn’t sure if I was sorry.

“What?” he said, bewildered. “No. No, I should be apologizing to you. Priya deserved a punch in the nose.”

“But she has a point,” I said. “I know that now.”

“Just because she’s right doesn’t mean she wasn’t being an asshole about it,” said Ravi. “You know what Judge Bandele says. Debate shouldn’t mean we’re enemies.”

I nodded. I wished it was true beyond the boundaries of Candor, too.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” He shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “It’s not like she’s my sister anymore.”

“What? Of course she is — ”

“That might be the last time I see her ever. And I spent the last of it arguing.”

I thought of Caleb. “I know the feeling,” I said. “Do you feel bad?”

“Very,” said Ravi. “But — at the same time — I almost feel relieved. I’m a new person now. I can make my own way.”

He must have sensed something was wrong, because then he asked, “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “My brother, Caleb...” I trailed off, but Ravi knew already.

“I saw. Erudite had a lot of transfers this year.”

“I never saw it coming,” I said. “Before we chose, he told me to think for myself. I thought he was telling me that I’d never belong anywhere. I yelled at him — I’d never really yelled at someone before. But it was actually about himself.”

My heart ached. I missed Caleb so much. My mom. Even my dad. I sat down, and Ravi next to me. He hugged me.

“Sometimes I want to go back,” I murmured. “I just want things to not be uncertain anymore.”

I hated feeling alone. I hated not being able to trust anyone with everything. And I hated this dread, this sense of doom lurking around the corner. I knew that I hadn’t done well on my midterms. I wouldn’t do well on the finals. When the Full Unveiling came, I didn’t even know what I would do there.

But it wasn’t like I had any other options. I would’ve been that half-brave Dauntless who never passed initiation; I would’ve been the depressed psycho who couldn’t complete Amity enlightenment; I would’ve been just as much of a confused and torn mess in Erudite as I was here. They were all right. Abnegation was the only place where people like me could feel secure. Perhaps “Divergent” was just a code word for “doomed to fail anywhere”.

As if reading my thoughts, Ravi said, “I know.”

* * *

Sunday morning, Judge Morris sent out a notification that all of us were to meet in Judge Bandele’s courtroom for 8:30 a.m. homeroom, before our first class of the day. We didn’t need to be told why.

Everyone was there. Even the people who hadn’t shown up for class in weeks. Nervous mumbling rippled throughout the gallery as we watched Morris conversing casually with Bandele, even after the clock ticked past 8:30. Finally, two minutes into their conversation, someone did the most Candor thing I have ever seen. Oona walked to the front, stood between Morris and Bandele, and cleared her throat.

“Both of you are stalling to see if any of us are rude enough to interrupt and ask to put up our scores,” she said. “I’m interrupting. Please put up our scores.”

Both men looked at her, their eyes wide. Then Morris sighed, dug out his wallet, and gave Bandele a ten-credit bill.

“Very well, Miss Posner,” said Morris.

“And he said it would never be a transfer,” Bandele smiled at Oona. She beamed right back, then sat down.

Morris stepped up to the judge’s seat and clicked a button, lighting up the screen on the wall. “As you know,” he said, “these midterms have no bearing on your standing in Candor, but they are a good indicator of how you will do on your finals if you were to take them today. You will receive your individual exam scores after homeroom so you know where to improve.”

He clicked a button and the screen filled with names. The first column was all transfers. 

_ Posner, Oona (Am) — 84 _   
_ Mainwaring, Alyss (E) — 80 _   
_ Espada, Altagracia (D) — 79 _   
_ Barton, Felice (D) — 74 _   
_ Brown, Zachary (D) — 69 _   
_ Johns, Leanne (E) — 67 _   
_ Prior, Phoebe (Ab) — 67 _

Seventh. Or sixth, since I was tied with Leanne. Twenty points under a passing grade, but nobody had gotten a passing grade. My eyes moved down to the last transfers.

_ Cunningham, Ford (E) — 63 _   
_ Lithden, Theodore (D) — 61 _   
_ Lyle, Lars (D) — 60 _   
_ Fitzgerald, Jedidiah (Am) — 55 _   
_ Balakrishnan, Ravi (E) — 49 _

I looked at Ravi. He was turned to the nearby Dauntless and was laughing about Zac getting a 69, whatever that meant. But I knew he had seen his score. He was rubbing his thumbnail with his index finger.

The Candor-borns’ scores surprised me.

_ Cole, Brighton — 72 _   
_ Manning, Eurydice — 67 _   
_ De Luca, Sherlock — 64 _   
_ Freedman, Titus — 61 _   
_ Donovan, Taylor — 56 _   
_ Albright, Aletheia — 55 _   
_ O’Reilly, Clyde —50 _   
_ Santiago, Katarina — 38 _

“What?!” Aletheia shrieked. “That’s not possible!”

“I’m afraid it is possible, Miss Albright,” said Judge Morris, “considering you helped establish a record low in Candor-born initiate attendance. I’m very disappointed in all of the Candor-born, in fact.”

Aletheia’s mouth was a perfect O. I tried to hide a smile.

“While on the subject,” said Morris, “I would like to single out Miss Posner for flawless attendance, a near-passing midterm score, and making me lose a bet just a minute ago. None of us thought that an Amity transfer would excel above our own Candor-born. Congratulations, Miss Posner.”

He motioned for her to stand and we applauded. She was blushing like a peach, but her grin lit up the whole room. When she sat down again, I hugged her.

“Your Honor, with all due respect,” she spoke up, “it’s not a passing score. None of us deserve congratulations.”

Morris raised an eyebrow, then stepped down from the judge’s seat. “You are correct. But we’ve learned not to expect any of our initiates to pass the midterms,” he said. “Should we? Absolutely. Each one of you was capable of getting an 85 or above. 

“But every year, we have a similar distribution of grades. Every year, we have the same problem. Every year, our initiates come in with the delusion that they’re smart enough to do this easily. They think their old study habits, their old schedules, their old routines are good enough to pass. Their seniors will remind them, ‘Take initiation seriously. Study hard.’ But they think they’re too smart to worry. Too smart to go to office hours. Too smart to have tutoring. Too smart to sacrifice their free time. It’s not just the Candor-born. It’s not just the Erudite transfers. It’s all of you.

“So this is where I shall step back from degrading the Candor-born and address the whole class — ”

He walked up to the railing, separating him and Bandele from us. He scanned the room, meeting each of our eyes, one by one.

“Get your shit together,” he said. “Or every single one of you will fail Candor initiation.”


	21. Chapter 21

Our class left homeroom white-faced and silent. When I stepped into the bathroom afterwards, Aletheia and Katie were conversing in the little waiting parlor. Aletheia was fixing her hair. Katie seemed distraught. Neither of them paid me attention as I passed by. 

“I can’t do it anymore, Allie,” Katie said. 

I wasn’t planning to eavesdrop, but the bathroom was pretty quiet. “That’s ridiculous,” said Aletheia. “You chose to stay here. Now you have to finish it out.”

 “But I can’t. It’s too hard. I tried my best and I got a 38.”

“You can get better. You’ll go to tutoring.”

“I don’t wanna go to tutoring. I don’t wanna practice law at all.”

“Well, what are you gonna do? Be factionless?”

“Maybe!”

Aletheia went silent. After a while she asked, “Excuse me?”

Katie hesitated. “Well — you know how we were talking to the ladies who do our nails — I wanted to know what it’s like, just doing nails every day. I kind of want to do it too, Allie.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Maybe I wanna.”

“Do you know how they live? You’ll have nothing — ”

“I have nothing here! My dad’s a jerk. My mom’s never around. My sisters think I’m a bimbo-headed slut, and they’re right. I’m never gonna pass those exams. I got the lowest score ever. Might as well quit.”

“Katarina Santiago, don’t be stupid! You are not throwing your life away like that!”

“You’re not my mom. You don’t tell me what to do. Nobody tells me what to do.”

I heard the clack of high heels. Katie had left. Aletheia swore. When I finished my business and washed my hands, I saw her leaning against the countertop in the waiting area, staring at the mirror. 

“What are you looking at?” she snapped. I didn’t respond, just hurried out.

In Legal Procedure, everyone was solemn and fidgety. While Judge Touma was lecturing, everyone’s laptops were open to the email that Morris had just sent out. Our individual exam scores. I didn’t really want to look. My score had been low enough that I could have easily gotten a zero on one of the exams. What if it was Arguments or Investigations? Procedure and Reasoning were important, yes, but those were things you could study for. But arguing, perceiving, those were talents.

Midway through the lecture I decided to message Ravi.

_**P. Prior:** Hey.  _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** hey _

_**P. Prior:** Are you doing okay? _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** yea why _

_**P. Prior:** Your score. _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** i just didnt finish in time. dyslexia. had it since i was little _

_**P. Prior:** Okay. If you need a study buddy, you know I’m here. _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** what did u get on them _

_**P. Prior:** 67\. I haven’t checked the individual scores. _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** ok _

_**P. Prior:** What did you get? _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** 30 prosedure, 23 reasoning, 62 aurgments, 81 investigaitions _

I stopped to read his reply again. High scores in all of the talent areas. He had sent another reply while I was thinking. 

_**R. Balakrishnan:** touma added a note asking to meet her aftar class maybe she can help _

_**P. Prior:** I hope so! Maybe we should do what Oona does and actually start going to office hours. _

_**R. Balakrishnan:** yea lmao _

Now my curiosity was piqued, breaking through denial. Taking a deep breath, I opened the most recent email in my inbox.

_ Phoebe Prior _

_ Rounded Average: 67 _

_ Legal Procedure: 46 _

_ Logical and Analytical Reasoning: 73 _

_ Argumentative Technique: 69 _

_ Investigative Technique: 78 _

_ Notes: See me in office hours to discuss your score. — Judge Madullah Touma, Legal Procedure _

I sent my scores to Ravi. He replied just like I thought he might:

_**R. Balakrishnan:** haaaaaaa you got 69 _

* * *

I was in a long line of people to see Judge Touma after class. The line had a lot of initiates, but also a few older law students. Touma must have taught upper-level courses, too. I had never really given up my Abnegation habit of subtly idling behind so that people could pass in front of me, so I was dead last.

By the time the second-to-last student came out, it was lunchtime. I had been too anxious to eat breakfast. My stomach ached for food. But I steeled myself and knocked on the doorframe anyway.

“Your Honor?” I said quietly.

“Come in,” she said. “Close the door.”

I stepped inside. Her office was clean and spartan in design, as unsentimental as her level voice. There weren’t even pictures. I knew that devout Muslims avoided photography, drawings, and other depictions of God’s creation, deeming them to be blasphemous. Naturally, such a way of life attracted some to Abnegation. But I had the impression that Muslims in other factions were not as legalistic about the rule. Judge Touma must have been an exception.

“You wanted to see me about my midterm?” I said, sitting across from her desk.

She nodded. “Yes...Prior, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I didn’t often speak in class. I wasn’t surprised that she was unsure of my name.

Touma opened a cabinet in her desk and pulled out a paper test. My own. “I gave you a 46,” she said slowly, flipping through the pages. “You earned 46 out of 60 points in the multiple choice.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s...not good — ”

“Actually, that’s average,” said Touma. “Your real problem was in the short answer and long essay questions. I was unable to grade them.”

“What do you mean?”

She opened the test to the essay pages and turned them around. I thought they looked just fine. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it and looked at Judge Touma, confused. 

“Has anyone ever told you that you write backwards?” she asked sharply.

My eyes widened. I looked at the paper.

My parents had tried to train me to write with my right hand, but I never caught on. So I wrote with my left hand, right to left on the page so I didn’t smudge the ink. That was how I had always taken handwritten notes, how I was writing in my journal now. I knew most people didn’t do that. And I knew how to write the regular way; I had done it for school.

But this was not the regular way. I had done my entire test backwards.

“I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “I must’ve been — really tired, or I was nervous — ”

“Do you know what this looks like?” asked Touma, her dark eyes narrowing.

“Well, I’m left-handed, I think I just forgot to switch back — ”

“This looks like cheating, that’s what it looks like. Are you aware that the ceilings in the Exam Room are mirrored to catch people who do something exactly like this?”

“I didn’t cheat, I swear!” I protested. “Ask Irene, I took the truth serum!”

“How do you know the director of Academic Integrity by name?”

I wasn’t prepared to answer that question. “I — it’s a long, long story — but I swear. I didn’t cheat. You can hold it up to a mirror to read it, the words are all mine.”

Touma was silent. I didn’t know if it was because she already knew the last part or because she didn’t. But when I met her eyes, I saw a bitterness that extended beyond just the backwards exam.

I saw something that I had seen in my father’s eyes as he watched me walk out of the Choosing Ceremony on my own. I saw myself, Abnegation’s daughter, choose Candor. And I saw Sajida, Judge Touma’s daughter, choose Abnegation. An equivalent exchange. An eye for an eye.

“Your Honor,” I whispered, “with all due respect, was this really about the midterm?”

Touma averted her gaze. The answer was not as plain as yes or no.

“Initially, yes,” she said softly. “Even with the help of the mirror...your handwriting is terrible. Please don’t make me read anything like that again.”

“Okay,” I said. 

“Thank you.” She inhaled. “Something — happened, with Sajida.”

“Is it alright if I ask?”

“If I can ask something first.”

“Okay.”

“Why did you leave Abnegation?”

I hesitated. I had not expected that question. I had been afraid my friends would ask me before, during the conversation about initiations, and I wouldn’t know how to answer. But somehow, I looked at Touma and now I knew. 

“I knew there was more to me than what Abnegation allowed me to show,” I said. “I wanted to find out what I truly was.”

She frowned. “Did you not find that clarity in your aptitude test?”

Again, I paused. I could not lie to a Candor.

“Sometimes the test can make the choice harder,” I said truthfully. 

She looked down again. I could see she understood part of what I meant. 

“Sajida received Candor on the test,” said Touma. Her voice was so quiet now that I almost had to strain to hear it. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask. But she’s my only child. I couldn’t sleep, I had to know. I woke her up and she told me. She wasn’t lying.”

Touma ducked her head further away and pulled out a handkerchief. She sniffled. When she looked back, her eyes were beginning to red and a small tear remained on her cheek, missed by the handkerchief. 

“And then she hugged us that morning and said goodbye. I didn’t know what she meant.” She blinked hard. “She chose Abnegation. She never said why.”

“Did you see her on Visiting Day?” I asked. 

It was her turn now to hesitate. 

“No,” she said weakly. “But I went. They said she — failed initiation.”

I drew a sharp breath. Failed initiation? “That’s not right,” I said. “Nobody fails out of Abnegation.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes again. “I know. It didn’t sound right. But I was so upset, I couldn’t tell if he was lying.”

“He?” I echoed. “Who?”

“Her host parent,” said Touma. “Marcus Eaton.”

* * *

I left Judge Touma’s office, my head spinning.

I didn’t tell her that my chest immediately flared in panic at the name. I wasn’t sure why at first and couldn’t explain it. But she seemed to notice. I knew she understood. Our faction leader taking a transfer into his house and failing her out in under three weeks — something was not right and we both knew it. 

Sajida transferred to answer a question, just like I did. But something must have gone wrong. 

I had asked Touma if it was alright for me to poke around in the case. She said yes, as long as I didn’t jeopardize my initiation. I asked if Sajida had left behind any computers, journals, or writings that might have suggested what she was in Abnegation to do. Touma just shook her head. After Sajida transferred, her father had tried to clean out her room. Her computer was clean of everything except schoolwork and some music. 

Inside the stuffing of her pillow, however, they found a miniature safety lighter. Sajida had asthma and did not smoke. Her mother suspected that if Sajida was hiding something, she must have written it on paper and burned it. That was a common loophole in Candor families. If a child wanted to get away with something, they had to be so good at hiding it that they would never need to lie.

From there, I drew the conclusion: if she was writing her thoughts on paper to hide record of them being written, she must have done something to hide record of her research. 

There weren’t many ways to do that in Candor. Our computers didn’t let us delete search history. Everything was open access.

So what wasn’t looked at as frequently?

I grabbed a quick lunch of fizzy soda and chips from a vending machine, then beelined it to the library. It was the largest law library in Candor. Many non students came here every day; I imagined that a Candor-born girl would be pretty familiar with it. 

A bored young man who I’d never seen before was working behind the front desk. I stopped just before he could see me walk in. I thought back to how Ace had gotten past the security in the Merciless Mart. A casual confidence. I held it in my mind, breathed deeply, and stepped up.

“Can I help you?” the librarian asked.

I smiled. “Hi...this might sound like a weird request. But my friend mentioned some items that I might want to check out, and I can’t remember the titles. Can I look up her checkout history?”

“Of course,” said librarian, turning to the computer. “What’s her name?”

Five minutes later I walked out of the library with one book, photocopies of two trial transcripts, and a case file.

Maybe Irene was on to something. In a faction characterized by honesty, few suspected their peers of lying.

I returned to my room with the sheaf of paper, closing my door and spreading them out on the floor in front of me. I had read the titles and abstracts. There was a pattern. 

On the left, I placed the trial transcripts. These two had both been checked out by Sajida on the same day, about three months ago. The first was  _ Morrick v. Erudite,  _ a twenty-year-old lawsuit brought by a factionless man who claimed that the literacy tests were discrimination. Morrick lost. Then, weeks later, he disappeared. The second transcript was  _ People v. Ophelia,  _ a forty-year-old criminal case. A woman who went by the name of “Ophelia” had stabbed an Abnegation man. Investigators found that the man had been physically abusing Ophelia’s autistic wife. Ophelia was sentenced to death and her wife was given life without parole. She died two months into her sentence. 

I thought of Lady Rose. Of the angel girls. Perhaps Ophelia and her wife were with them, watching the world that was taken from them.

On the right, I placed the book. This had been checked out by Sajida a week after the transcripts. It was a collection of anonymous publications, entitled  _ Criticisms of the Selfless Governance.  _ I had not read much of it yet, but it was a very old book, a physical copy that seemed to have been hand printed and bound. The publication date marked it as having been released years before the Great Peace. On the inside cover was inscribed the words, “What good are your donations of clothing and food — when you are the reason we are naked and hungry?”

And in the center of my display lay a single case file. It was the last thing checked out, two days before the Choosing Ceremony. The copy was in a black folder, denoting a cold case. The label read in long-dried typewriter ink:

“Abigail Eaton, Age 13, Abnegation. Missing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaassss


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello my con law exam is going to kill me
> 
> but im updating anyway
> 
> enjoy

That night, I had a giant pride flag delivered to my room. Earlier, I contacted Ravi about where he had gotten his transgender flag. I asked if they had them for all of the queer identities and he said yes. I ordered the biggest bisexual flag they had, easily over three feet long. 

I hung it up on the blank wall next to my desk. The magenta, purple, and blue stripes were so bright they tinted all of my room in a glorious lavender.

The flag served three purposes. One, pride. I was getting the hang of the concept. I liked who I was. Two, a pop of color. Like Abnegation, Candor had a very strict code of what colored decorations one could have in their living space, and pride flags were among the few approved items. Three, subterfuge. It was designed to hang horizontally and had three rings at the top. It covered a beautiful amount of wall space, as well as the poster paper and sticky notes that I hung up underneath it, and which I used to sort my thoughts.

I had several groups of sticky notes and corresponding thoughts. I didn’t know if they were all connected or if I was just crazy, but getting them down all in one place helped me think.

The first group of sticky thoughts: Sajida. For whatever reason, Sajida was reading cases about factionless who rebelled against the system. That lead her to checking out _Criticisms of the Selfless Governance,_ which I skimmed at an ungodly hour of the night. It spoke of the corrupt government that existed before the factions, when there was a country beyond the fence, but more importantly it spoke of the good people that led it. Good people who called themselves Christian men and women. Good people who defended police brutality. Good people who gave to the poor. Good people who tried their hardest to keep the poor in poverty.

It was horrifying, the amount of old government I saw in the new.

But this, somehow, had led Sajida Touma to recall the five-year-old cold case of the missing Abigail Eaton, daughter of Marcus Eaton. Had she transferred to Abnegation specifically to follow Abigail’s case? Had she thought there was something else to solve that years of investigation hadn’t? How had she managed to get Marcus as her host parent? I didn’t know; I couldn’t even say for sure that Abigail’s case was the reason that Sajida transferred. Abigail was the byproduct of a longer search, an exploration of society’s darker side. _Morrick v. Erudite, People v. Ophelia, Criticisms of a Selfless Governance,_ and other unknown materials that she read but hadn’t checked out, all had something in common—the idea that a system wasn’t perfect if it was built on the backs of people in pain. 

So where did a missing Abnegation girl fit in all of this?

The second group of sticky thoughts: Mom. Everything she had told me. Erudite. I didn’t quite understand how Erudite could be split in two and united in their hatred of Abnegation. This group had a hole. I needed to get my hands on some of those publications. It would mean more trips to the library and a lot of coins for newspapers.

The third group of sticky thoughts: Lady Rose. 

It was actually the thought group for the factionless, but I was coming to organize my thoughts by name of the person I associated them with. I wrote down everything I knew about Lady Rose. Her past, her abuse, her final day. Her legacy.

I had acquired a camera as part of an Investigations exercise and had snapped pictures of the vandalism I had seen in the past week. The first was the spray paint on the Merciless Mart door. There were others like that. A painted outline of the angel girls’ dead bodies on the sidewalk outside Antigone’s. On the blade of Themis’ sword, someone had written “True justice is not here.” I had a newspaper clipping; two factionless men were shot for trying to enter the Erudite compound and murder Thomas Beauregard. Seven factionless dead because of the Beauregard case. 

I had yet to separate my current feelings for the factionless from my past feelings. It was harder than I thought. I had to think of what Aletheia said. Was it so hard to believe in selflessness and meritocracy at the same time? What was wrong with meritocracy? It was only fair. You get out of life what you put into it. The factionless already got handouts in the form of food and clothing; did they want places in the factions to be handed out too? 

Or was it not about being in the factions at all?

This led me to the fourth group: the group I called Irene. Mom said that Candor was splitting apart too. But if it was happening, I didn’t see it. Though we emphasized free thought and expression, we still loved conformity here in Candor. At least that part hadn’t changed from Abnegation. The only sign of deviance that I had seen was in Irene. I determined to ask her about it. 

Which took me to my last group. 

Me. 

I understood so little about Divergence except that it was dangerous for me to understand more. So I tried to look at myself. With every one, I was growing unsure. Perhaps I had passed the Candor portion of the aptitude test. But I lied every day, and it didn’t even make me feel bad. Was that a problem? Yes, I’d passed the Erudite and Abnegation portions, but I felt more estranged from each faction with each day I spent doubting them. Every conflict I stuck my nose into pushed me further from peace-loving Amity. And I already knew I was a weakling and a coward—Dauntless felt a whole world away.

But whatever I truly was, why was it dangerous?

By the time I finished organizing the notes on my wall, it was four thirty in the morning. I stepped back and looked at it. I had used a red marker to connect things that I thought might be relevant, but it didn’t look like a pattern so much as it did a mad, bleeding spiderweb. I had been developing a headache all night, and now it was so bad that I was seeing black spots.

I hung up my bisexual flag again, covering the red web and sticky thoughts. Then, too tired to shower, I crawled into bed in my clothes, trying not to think of waking up in three hours.

* * *

 

I didn’t wake up in three hours. I woke up in six and a half. I slept right through my alarm for Reasoning and missed the class. 

At lunch, Lars said, “You look like you just died.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

At one point I met Ace’s eyes from across the room. Where did she fit into the web? A factionless who got into Dauntless. She must have been very smart for a factionless, that’s how she got to take the aptitude test. But the question was, why? From what Miriam had told me, it seemed as if the factionless hated the Dauntless. 

My mother’s voice came back to me. _A little Dauntless-style training would help Phoebe stay out of such messes._

Maybe I had a way to find a couple answers.

After Investigative Technique, where Judge Morris also pointed out that I looked awful and probably needed a nap, I found Ace in the lobby. As usual when she saw me, her face screwed into a frown. I smiled. 

“What do you want?” she grunted.

“Your guidance, actually,” I said, to which she glanced up. 

“Are pigs flying yet?” she asked. “Has Phoebe Prior asked for guidance instead of doing whatever she pleases?”

She led me to the dining hall, then down the corridor to the _Authorized Personnel Only_ door. “Are we going in there?” I asked.

“Only if your request requires more ammo than what I’ve got,” said Ace. My gaze darted to the gun on her hip. “What’s the problem?”

I glanced around. The hallway was empty, since all classes were done for the day.

“I want you to train me,” I said finally.

Ace’s eyebrows flew up. Her left eyebrow was only a half, the other half having been sheared off by the scar.

“Train you?” she echoed.

I nodded. “Like a Dauntless. I want to learn how to defend myself.”

Something flickered across her face—fear?—and she turned. She swiped her ID and the mysterious doors opened.

She pulled me inside. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I entered, but a generic office with a desk, couch, and minifridge was definitely not it. The only things that stood out were the rack of firearms and knives along the back wall and the Dauntless symbol, the red flames, on the front of the desk. This must have been where the Dauntless security did some of their work. It was empty, but Ace still ducked into the bathroom to double-check. Then she locked the doors and pulled metal shutters over the window.

“Would you care to repeat yourself?” Ace asked, clearly stunned.

I squared my shoulders. “I said I want to learn self-defense. Dauntless learn how to fight, don’t they? Just teach me what you know.”

“I can’t just _do_ that,” said Ace. For the first time, she actually seemed rather ruffled. “You’re a Candor initiate. Do you know how many rules you’d be breaking—”

“I don’t think rule-breaking is a thing that I’m scared of anymore,” I said plainly.

Ace turned away, muttering vile curses. She rubbed her forehead and ran her hand through her hair. It was an odd time to think “ _oh my god, she’s so hot”,_ but there the thought was. 

“Do you know how many rules _I’d_ be breaking?!” she repeated, her eyes wide.

“Look,” I said, “you clearly know that I’m—” I hesitated. Did she? She had to. “—That I’m you-know-what.”

Her lips tightened. Oh, yes. She definitely knew. “Yeah. I know that you have a death wish.”

“But you know I need it.”

“I think you need to stay in your lane,” said Ace.

“That’s your opinion.”

“No. That’s a direct order from Irene.” 

“Do the math, Ace,” I said. “There are people dying because of something I started. Do you think I’m safe for long?”

“Nobody blames you for what happened to her,” said Ace.

“You’re head of security. How many people have tried to come after me?”

She said nothing.

“What about you?” I asked. “Are they blaming you?”

“I didn’t give the media permission to publish my name,” she said.

“But they probably know anyway,” I said.

Ace’s gaze darted. I wondered how many people had made attempts on her life, just like they’d tried on Beauregard.

“That’s not relevant,” she said. “My answer is no. If you’re in danger, then the Dauntless will protect you.”

I went silent. She seemed to think she’d won. Sighing, she turned away, went to the fridge, and pulled out a beer bottle. Then she sat on the couch and opened the bottle with a knife from her jacket sleeve.

“Do you really believe that?” I asked quietly.

“‘Course,” she said, and took a drink.

It was an obvious lie.

I sat on the other end of the couch. “Why do you really want to be trained?” asked Ace.

“Does there have to be another reason?”

“There always is, with you.”

“I’m sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong again, and I think I might be getting into situations where I’m in danger,” I said.

“Figures.”

“Do you remember the case of Abigail Eaton?” I asked, looking at her.

Ace froze. She was looking straight forward, the scarred side of her face a profile to me. The scar pinched her left eye out of shape, but I saw how her pupil dilated slightly, how her jaw muscles tensed. Something wasn’t right. She wanted to lie.

“Heard of it,” she said, taking another sip.

“An Abnegation girl went missing,” I said.

“And they blamed the factionless.” That must have been why she didn’t like the mention of it.

“But it was declared a cold case and she wasn’t found.”

“You’re not trying to solve it, are you?”

“Actually, I’m not,” I answered. “But someone was. A girl named Sajida Touma.”

Ace stood up. “Judge Touma’s daughter?”

I nodded. “She transferred to Abnegation. Maybe because she wanted to solve the case, maybe for another reason. All I know is that two days before she transferred, she checked out Abigail’s case file from the library, and that when Judge Touma went to visit her two days ago, she was told that Sajida failed out of Abnegation.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Ace. “Stiffs let everyone pass.”

I nodded. “I know. What makes it weirder is that Marcus Eaton, Abigail’s father, was Sajida’s host parent.”

Ace’s face tensed again at the name. Undoubtedly, she knew about Marcus if she hated Abnegation so much.

“So you want to find out what happened to Sajida,” said Ace.

I nodded. “I owe it to Judge Touma. She lost her only daughter, just like my mom lost hers.” I hesitated, then added, “I think it has something to do with the things that are going on now—all the conflict with the factionless, what Erudite’s planning. I feel like Sajida wasn’t just chasing Abigail, she was chasing that mystery too.”

Ace turned away and put her hand over her mouth, deep in thought. Her piercings caught the dim light from the desk, casting red fragments across the mottled skin of her scar.

“Can’t this wait until after initiation?” asked Ace. “You have too much to worry about as it is.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, you know, like a liar. “But you know the stats, Ace. If she’s in danger, every day that passes is a higher chance that she’s dead.”

It had already been two days since Judge Touma first found out that Sajida had failed. And it had been three weeks since she had been seen by anyone who wasn’t Abnegation. According to everything I’d learned in Investigations, her chances of being alive now were very slim.

Finally, Ace sighed.

“Fine,” she said. “I still have some contacts among the factionless. Give me a description of the girl and I’ll pass it along. Tell your housekeeper to keep an ear out.”

Relief swelled in my chest. “Thank you,” I said. “What about training?”

“My shift’s over at eight. Get changed into something you can move in and meet me on the roof then.”

“We’re training on the roof?” 

Ace smirked wryly.

“No. If I’m sneaking you out to the Dauntless compound, we can’t just walk out the front door.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to post this one early because im queer and i can do what i want

I needed to study. I also desperately needed a nap. I did neither.

I tried to nap after dinner, but I was so excited for eight o’clock that it was pretty hard. I tossed and turned for an hour, then got up. 

I knew my red hair made me pretty recognizable, so I stifled my pride and tied it up inside a black handkerchief. My selection of “clothes I could move in” was pretty limited. Candor encouraged light exercise, since most of its members spent their days at desks, but it still wasn’t popular. I owned a few flexible white turtlenecks and black leggings, plus some never-worn gym shoes. White shoes, very Candor. I decided it was good enough.

I was wrong. I got to the roof, where the door was unlocked and Ace was waiting. She immediately swore.

“What about ‘I’m sneaking you into Dauntless’ do you not understand?” she snapped. “Get rid of that white shit in five minutes or I’m leaving without you.”

“I don’t have an abundance of combat boots in my closet,” I said mildly.

Ace cursed again. “Wait here.”

She left me on the roof. A few minutes later, she returned holding a strange can. 

“Take off your shoes.”

I obeyed. She took them, put them on the ground, and shook the can. Then she knelt and sprayed the shoes with black until they were completely covered.

“Let ‘em dry for a few minutes,” she said.

“What about my shirt?” I asked.

In response, she did something I would never expect. Right in front of me, in the open air, she took off her leather jacket and pulled off her black t-shirt. 

My jaw dropped. For one, I’d never seen anyone just _undress_ like that. In Upper Levels gym class, the Abnegation typically changed in modesty stalls. The suddenness of the action, paired with the suggestion, shocked me into silence. 

For two—Ace had a very nice body. Her back and arms, though striped with more scars and tattoos than I could count, were thick with muscles. I gulped. She probably could snap me in half like a toothpick. When she turned to face me, holding out the black shirt, I couldn’t help but look down. She wore only a black sports bra, not necessarily designed to be attractive, but which left little to the imagination. A strange tattoo rested under her neck, a single, empty ring. 

I must have hesitated in taking the shirt because Ace threw it at me. “Change,” she said tersely, turning away to give me privacy. Then, as she put on her jacket again, she added, “Doesn’t Abnegation say it’s rude to stare?”

My face, already warm, burned hotter.

As if the whole universe was trying to make me flustered, even Ace’s shirt made me feel butterflies. It smelled like her. It was warm from her body heat. It was much too large, hanging almost to my knees. She tied the excess up in a knot, exposing an inch of my midriff, and when she helped me roll up the sleeves, her hand brushed the scar that peeked out of the collar. I shivered. 

When my newly-black shoes were dry, I put them on. “Follow me,” Ace ordered. “Consider this your warm-up.”

“Consider what my warm-up?”

In response, Ace turned and pulled herself up onto the ledge. I did the same with much more difficulty, and when I was finally standing, the sight made me gasp.

I looked out at all of Candor, alight by the red of the setting sun. The glass buildings reflected the light to color the streets with gold. We were up so high and the wind was so strong that I clutched Ace’s arm, suddenly aware of the deep chasm a few inches from my feet. But the view was so beautiful that the fear was worth it. 

“Watch,” said Ace. The ledge had enough room for her to take one step back, and then she leapt to the next building. 

It was easily a six foot gap, but she cleared it as if it was just a small step. She landed on the flat roof, one story below me, and turned with a grin. 

“It’s easy,” she called. “C’mon!”

My stomach clenched. “Ace, I don’t know…”

She folded her arms. “You wanna train like a Dauntless? You gotta _be_ Dauntless.”

She was right. My brain ran through everything I could remember about physics and physical education. It was basically a standing long jump. I was terrible at those. And Ace was a foot taller than me, so she had longer legs. But I had an extra step or two backwards. And I had room to travel down. And Ace might catch me if I didn’t make it—

I leapt. 

Breathless, I flew. And then I hit the floor of the roof, the impact stinging my feet through my shoes. I stumbled and Ace caught me. 

“See? Was it that bad?” she smirked. 

“No,” I laughed breathily. 

“Good.” She pointed west. In the distance near the ground, about ten buildings away, was a small black line. Train tracks. “We’re going there. So we got a few more to cross.”

Not for the first time—and certainly not for the last—I wondered if I was insane.

* * *

We crossed the skyline this way, the Dauntless way. Thankfully, Ace seemed familiar with it. She knew which gaps were small enough to jump and found convenient wood planks to put over the gaps that were larger. When we reached the last glass building in the Candor neighborhood, we scaled down the fire escape and climbed through the window of an abandoned office building.

Finally we reached the right street, and Ace taught me how to climb up the metal supports of the train tracks. My hands were blistered by the time we made it to the platform. Ace knelt, pressing her hands to the floor of the platform before standing again.

“There’s one on the way,” she said. “It’ll slow when it sees us, but it won’t stop, so you gotta be fast.”

“Okay,” I said, breathless.

A familiar sound cut through the air: the train horn. Ace jogged to the end of the platform, her back to me. I wondered briefly if I should go to the other end, but I might need to run a little to find the right time. I stood in the middle. It was good that I spent so much time watching the Dauntless come and go from school. 

The light appeared around the corner, the train gliding towards us on steel rails. The horn blared again. As it drew closer, I saw that it was only a few boxcars, the doors open for any waiting Dauntless.

Like a cat, Ace sprang from the platform into one car, then leaned out. Panic surged briefly in my chest. Should I grab her hand? One of the railings? I stepped forward and started jogging. I ran with the car for a few steps, then threw myself sideways. One of my hands snapped on a handle next to the doorway, my shoulder slammed into the car door, and then a tight grip clamped around my other hand. 

Ace pulled me inside and I tumbled on top of her. When I pushed myself up, our noses were inches apart.

“S-sorry,” I stammered, scrambling off.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she repeated. Her face was red up to the piercings in her ears.

The train picked up speed. I adjusted the handkerchief that hid my hair, the wind picking stray curls out. I had never been on anything faster than a bus before. The rush, the adrenaline, it made me tremble.

Shakily, I stood and leaned against the wall of the train, watching the city smear by. The sunset flickered through the space between buildings. In one open stretch, I caught a glimpse of grey. Rows and rows of squarish houses. The place that used to be my home. 

I instantly felt shame. I hadn’t thought as much about home as I felt like I should. I’d just pushed it into a corner of my mind, shoved it haphazardly inside a small box and never opened it. Mom and Dad would be done with dinner right about now. They would be sitting in the living room, my father reading for work, my mother mending a garment. And Caleb and I would sit on the floor and tell stories, stories of our day, and then Dad would lead us through a few Bible chapters. I remembered the last passage that we had ever read together as a family, the day before the aptitude test. James 2. On the sin of partiality. _“For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.”_ I wondered if any of us knew that it would be the last passage. I wondered if any of us felt convicted by the words of James.

Mom would have been the only one, maybe. 

“That’s home?” said Ace, leaning on the other side of the open door. 

I nodded. “Was.”

“Looks different like this.”

I nodded again. Ace slumped down on the floor and stretched her long legs. After a while, I did the same. 

“Where was home for you?” I asked. 

Ace closed her eyes. The wind ruffled her hair like a crow’s feathers. 

“Everywhere,” she said. “Moved around a lot.”

“Did you sleep on the streets?”

She opened her good eye. “Not all factionless sleep on the streets, Phoebe.” 

Whoops. “Sorry.”

She closed her eye and let out a soft, “heh”. “I did, though,” she said. “Only for two, three years, just before my aptitude test.”

“Only?” I echoed. It seemed like forever. “What was before that?”

“Some house.” No elaboration. 

“Why did you leave?”

She shrugged. “Houses ain’t always homes.” 

“Didn’t anyone help you?”

“Other factionless. Some of ‘em got me a job.”

“But not the Abnegation?”

“Abnegation doesn’t help people like me.”

“Well, we try to help everyone,” I said, but she shook her head. 

“You say that, but picture this: an Asian kid, six feet tall, with a shaved head and a scar like this, comes up to you? Stiffs run. Call the Dauntless.”

She wasn’t wrong. On service trips, we were taught to stay away from people who gave us a bad feeling. If I saw Ace on the streets down there, I’d run. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

“Not your fault.”

We watched the city for a while. The sun went down. The sky turned dusky and purple. 

“You call them that a lot,” I observed. “‘The Dauntless’. It’s never ‘we’.”

Ace shifted her feet, crossing one weathered combat boot over the other. “So?”

“Do you feel like—” I hesitated “—like you’re not one of them?”

But she never answered. “We’re here,” she said instead, and got to her feet. 

I leaned forward. Ahead was a wide, flat rooftop below the train tracks. I was confused for a moment, wondering if the train would slow down and let us off at stairs somewhere, but I remembered the Dauntless at school, flying from the moving train onto the lawn with ease. The train would not let us off at stairs. 

Ace put her hand on my shoulder. “You think you can do it?”

“Um—sure,” I lied. 

“It’s a five-story fall onto pavement if you miss,” she said. “I can carry you, if you want.”

“No, I can do it myself,” I said. 

She raised her one whole eyebrow. “Okay. You’ve got seven seconds to change your mind.”

Nine seconds later, Ace leapt from the train holding me like a child in her arms. She landed on her feet and knees, sending gravel spraying. Then she set me down. 

“That wasn’t bad at all!” I said brightly. 

“You’re heavier than you look, you know,” Ace grumbled. “Next time, you’re jumping.”

“Thank you,” I beamed at her. She just flushed and grumbled some more. 

She led me across the roof to a ledge at the other end, then climbed up with me. I looked down. The building we were on formed one side of a square with three other buildings. In the center of the square was a round hole in the concrete. I couldn’t see what was at the bottom.

“This, I won’t help you with,” said Ace.

“We’re jumping into that?” I asked, eyes widening.

She smirked.

“There’s no ladder alternative, is there?”

“Not if you want to train with me.”

Damn it. Ace just smirked again, saluted with two fingers, and stepped backwards off the edge.

“See ya,” she said in the split second before gravity took her.

I gasped. Ace fell, her arms spread and toes pointed, through free air. Then she vanished through the dark hole, that menacing black eye. I waited to hear a splash—maybe water?—but I heard nothing. 

This was a scare tactic. I would land safely at the bottom. That knowledge was the only thing that kept me from stepping back to the solid roof. My teeth chattered. I couldn’t back down now—I’d come all this way, I’d parkoured over three blocks of buildings and jumped on a moving train. And I’d be disappointing Ace. She’d never let me live it down.

I didn’t think. Just bent my knees and jumped.

The air howled in my ears as the ground surged toward me, my heart pounding so fast it hurt, every muscle in my body tensing as the falling sensation seemed to pull me right out of my body. The black eye grew, expanded into a gaping mouth. Swallowed me. I dropped into pitch darkness.

I hit something. Hard. It gave way beneath me, cradling my body before launching me up a little. As I bounced, limp and helpless, I wheezed, desperate for breath. Everything stung.

A net. There was a net at the bottom of the hole. It stopped shaking, and I could only stare at the patch of violet sky above me. A laugh bubbled from my throat, half relieved and half hysterical.

I had to stand on solid ground again. I rolled across the net, and saw hands stretching out to me at the edge. Ace was there, grinning. I was too shaky and happy to stand.

“Ace, I just jumped off a roof,” I giggled, leaning into her arms.

Her face was so close to mine. I smiled at it like I’d smiled at the sky. Her face was so pretty. The unscarred skin was so soft and pale. Her eyes were addictive, only brown but as curious, as beckoning as deep amber. When she smiled back, it made me laugh in joy again.

“You sure did,” said Ace, helping me to my feet. She set her hand on my back and said, “Welcome to Dauntless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> i have begun to post a sister story to this! some of you are wondering about ace, and for good reason. the first part of ace's story is now being posted in the same series as this one ("divergent, but for gays") and will be updated alongside this one. check it out!!


	24. Chapter 24

 “Whatever we do, leave the talking to me,” said Ace as she led me down a narrow tunnel. The walls were made of stone and the ceiling sloped as if we were descending into the heart of the earth. The tunnel was lit at long intervals, so in the dark space between each dim lamp, I drew closer towards Ace until I felt my shoulder brush her arm. In the circles of light I was safe again.

“We have to pass through the Pit to get to the training centers,” said Ace. “I’m going to tell you some stories as we walk, and I need you to laugh like you’re really interested in what I’m saying.”

“What if someone notices me?” I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

“Notices what?”

“That I don’t belong.”

“If you keep your head up and pretend like you belong, you’ll fit right in. Glare. Swagger a little. Dauntless is the largest faction by far, no one knows everybody.”

I thought of how easily I’d gotten Sajida’s library checkout history. Right. Act like you know what you’re doing, and nobody will suspect that you don’t. I tried to mimic Ace’s strides, long and purposeful. I even stuck my hands in my pants pockets. Confidence. Like a Dauntless.

After some stairs down, we reached a set of double doors and she pushed them open. 

I understood immediately why it was called the “Pit”. It was an underground cavern so huge I couldn’t see the other end of it from where we stood, at the bottom. Uneven rock walls soared a hundred feet above my head. Built into the stone walls were what seemed like storefronts, displaying food, clothing, supplies, leisure activities. A web of rickety bridges and spiraling iron staircases connected the whole strange town.

A slant of orange light stretched across one of the rock walls. Forming the roof of the Pit were panes of glass and, above them, a building that let in sunlight. It must have looked just like another city building when we passed it on the train. As the sunlight died, strange blue lanterns flickered on, hanging from random intervals above the metal bridges. 

People were everywhere, all dressed in black, all shouting and talking, expressive, gesturing. In Candor, I was getting used to loud rooms full of expressive people—and had even begun to talk with my hands myself—but this was a different discord, more intense, lawless. Everywhere I looked, there were scars and colored hair and tattoos and piercings, even a woman with a giant crystal embedded in her cheek. Ripped clothes and metal spikes. Leather and belts heavy with knives. Ace seemed tame in comparison. The few elderly folk I saw were as wiry and muscular as the teenager in her prime.

I tried not to stare, and to focus instead on the story Ace began to tell about a mission gone awry in Amity.

“So on the train ride out,” she said, laughing, “the old farmer’s huddled in the back of the car, scared shitless. Then the train stops so we can clear a fallen tree off the track, and when we turn around next, the old man’s gone! He was so scared, he didn’t even care about his stolen crops anymore, he just wanted off! It took us hours to find him, and when we did, he was vomiting under a tree. Had to tase him to get him back in.”

I didn’t find the story very funny, but I laughed loudly anyway. To my relief, when passing Dauntless glanced at us, their gazes seemed to be pulled more to Ace than to me. That was the advantage of being short.

We entered the main floor of the Pit with ease, but halfway through, Ace grabbed my hand. 

“Real quick. I wanna show you something,” she said in a lower voice.

Still shocked by the hand-holding, I followed. She led me to the right side of the Pit, which was conspicuously dark, shielded by a rock outcrop. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the ground we stood on ended at an iron railing. The air became colder, damper. And somewhere, something roared.

We leaned over the railing. The floor dropped off at a sharp angle, and several stories below was a river. Gushing water struck the wall beneath me, spraying my shoes. To my left, the water was calmer, but to the right it was white, battling with the rock.

I glanced around. Only one other Dauntless was nearby, leaning against a rock and napping. The roar of the river would do enough to drown my voice. 

“Gotta love how Dauntless has a death river running through their compound,” I said.

“The chasm reminds us that there’s a fine line between bravery and idiocy,” said Ace. “A daredevil jump off the ledge will end your life in a snap—no surviving this.”

“And someone needed to jump to figure that out?” I said, backing away from the rail.

Ace’s lip twitched in a smirk, but it was a grim smirk. 

“Just a reminder,” she said. “Never get too cocky.”

She led me back through the Pit toward a stairwell. Ace pulled out an old-fashioned key to get through the door, then at the top of the stairs, a second key. I wondered how easy it would be for a good lockpicker to get around Dauntless. Unlike the Candor, the Dauntless seemed to prefer simplicity over technology. 

The room she took me to reeked with sweat. It was huge, with a cracked wood floor painted with a circle in the middle. Hanging at three-foot intervals along the end of the room were faded black punching bags. On the right wall were all kinds of weights and handheld targets. On the left wall hung a green chalkboard, scrawled with names I only vaguely recognized. Edward, Peter, Will, Christina. Dauntless initiates—they might’ve been in my Upper Levels classes at some point. 

“We should have this place to ourselves,” said Ace, closing the door behind us. “This time of the night, nobody comes back to practice.”

“Is this where the initiates are training?” I asked.

“Trained,” she corrected. “Dauntless initiation occurs in three stages, each designed to train you in a different way. The first stage, which happens here, is the physical training. By week four, our initiates have already moved on.”

“To what?”

She gave me a look. “You know, if all you wanted to do was ask questions, we could’ve stayed back at Candor.”

I got the message. I didn’t ask another question.

She led me into the center of the ring and directed me to take off my shoes and socks. That also begged a question, but I held it.

“Normally, if a Candor wanted to learn how to defend themselves,” began Ace, “they would apply for something called a risk license. The risk license grants privileges normally reserved for Dauntless—carrying a weapon, learning fighting techniques, and so on. But you can only apply for the license if you work in a department like Major Crimes, or if you decide to become a court bailiff. And you don’t have the time for paperwork.”

“I don’t actually know how much time I have,” I confessed.

She nodded. “Exactly. So I’m going to work with you as much as I can for now. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get you an early risk license as part of witness protection.”

“Witness protection?” I asked. “So I am in danger?”

Ace hesitated. I smirked. Got her.

“Nevermind,” she snapped. “The point is, though I don’t teach Dauntless, I do teach the Candor classes. I’m not going to teach you like either.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She pulled off her jacket and gloves and tossed them aside. Then she bent down and began to untie her boots.

“You’re going to learn how to fight like a factionless.”

* * *

We started, to my surprise, with how to escape.

“When I lived in the projects,” Ace explained, “one of the many pastimes was something we called the Cage. You put money on the line. Two people go in the Cage, no weapons, no shoes, no gloves, as many clothes off as you’re comfortable with. And you fight. There’s no restrictions or limits on what you can or can’t do. First person to call—or first person to die—is the loser. The winner goes home with the money.”

“That sounds...brutal,” I said.

“Oh, it was,” she grinned. “But when I came here and fought with the other transfers, it put me ahead like you wouldn’t believe. In Dauntless, they got expectations.”

“In the projects, they don’t.”

“Correct.”

“So you play dirty?”

“Yes. But more importantly, you play it safe.”

She began by teaching me evasion maneuvers—how to avoid getting kicked, hit, or grabbed. Stance was everything. Fists up to guard the face. Shoulders and hips in line. Light on the balls of the feet. Weight distributed evenly. Body loose and ready to snap into action. She taught me how to dodge to the sides, how to slide and jump back, and how to drop low without losing balance. How to deflect blows with my arms. 

“They say the first few seconds of a fight are the most important,” said Ace. “Most Dauntless—most fighters in general—take this to mean that you go all in at first. But if you can survive long enough to exhaust your opponent, or long enough that they get sloppy, you can get the upper hand.”

After demonstrating and guiding me through the motions, she stood across from me and attacked. Powerful kicks that soared inches above my head, hooks that I was only barely able to deflect, punches that glanced my shoulders and sides. 

By the end of the session, I felt like jelly. Ace had pulled most of her strikes, and since she was barehanded and barefoot, it shouldn’t have hurt too badly, but I knew my body would be mottled with bruises in the morning. She got me a bottle of water and I guzzled it in a few minutes.

“That concludes our warm-up exercises,” Ace said brightly.

I glared at her. A light glow of perspiration dusted her brow, but other than that, she seemed just peachy. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

She grinned and punched my shoulder. “We can cover strikes later. You’re done for tonight, congrats.”

Groaning, I fell back against the floor. My chest heaved and the lights above me were hazy, dewy with sweat.

After a while, I glanced over at Ace. She nursed a water bottle idly, a gentle smile on her face. I realized I’d never seen her like this—content, relaxed. This was home for her. That was what it looked like to belong. Ever since we’d left the Institute, she’d changed into an entirely different person, someone who was confident, not in the fact that she was the most intimidating person in the room, but in the fact that she wasn’t. I wondered if I would ever reach that place. I wondered how Ace had figured out this was where she’d find it.

After a little while longer, she helped me up and let me put my shoes on again.

“There’s one more thing we should do while we’re here,” she said.

She led me out the door and down the hall. The next room was much longer, with a row of stalls when we walked in. At the far end of the room were targets. Sheets of paper with outlines of humans and concentric circles drawn over the vital areas.

“I’m going to…?” I began, unable to finish the question.

Ace nodded. “Getting the risk license might take a while, so you can’t carry. But I can still teach you.”

I saw the hole in Lady Rose’s head. The pool of blood behind her. My ears began to ring again with the boom of the gun.

“No,” I said shakily. “I can’t do it.”

“If something happens—if—if maybe I go down, or whoever’s protecting you isn’t there, I really think it’s important that you know how. I’m not asking you to shoot anyone. But if it comes to it—”

My eyes were brimming with tears. “I wouldn’t do it.”

“This isn’t up for discussion—”

Her breath hitched. Her eyes went wide. A half-second later, the door behind us opened.

We turned. A young man walked in, his heavy bootfalls echoing in the silence. His face was pierced in so many places I lost count, and his hair was long, dark, and greasy. But that wasn’t what made him so menacing. It was the ice in his eyes as they passed over us.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look what crawled out of the gutters.”

Ace’s back straightened. “Eric.”

Eric stepped towards us, almost uncomfortably close. His ice eyes flicked to me, scanning me top to bottom. I didn’t even need to adjust my stance to look more Dauntless. I was already ready to fight. I did not like this man, not one bit.

“What’s a leader of Dauntless doing in the initiates’ wing at night?” asked Ace. Her subtle way of telling me who Eric was, I supposed.

“Security check,” he said, his eyes still on me. “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Ace put her hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was to reassure me or to reassure her.

“This is—Tris,” she said.

I could see the gears turning in her head with the name. Had she gotten it from Beatrice? If so, had I told her my old name? I couldn’t remember doing so. Eric raised an eyebrow, pulling at the piercings and making the holes they occupied wider. I tried to hide a wince. “You’re not an initiate, are you?”

“She’s fifteen,” said Ace. “Heard from her friends that initiation’s getting harder, so she asked me if I’d give prep lessons.”

“I’m asking the girl, not you,” said Eric. “I haven’t seen you before. What family are you from?”

I met his eyes. My mind flickered back to my red spiderweb, the sticky cluster of thoughts that was Mom. Where she was from. I thought of how she could pick locks, how she had accepted my sexuality from the very beginning. The two strange indentations in her earlobe. I now knew what they were. The scars of closed piercings. 

“McCandless,” I said. 

Eric’s second eyebrow shot up. “She’s a—”

“Yeah,” said Ace. She’d caught on fast. Guess she’d made the connection before I did. “There’s so many of them, I’m not surprised you don’t know her.”

“But you will,” I said. “You’ll know me pretty well.”

Eric shifted his weight and nodded. He wasn’t impressed; he didn’t seem like someone who would be impressed easily. But at least he was satisfied.

“Alright. Show me what you’ve got,” he said.

He pointed at the targets. Ace’s hand tensed slightly on my shoulder.

“Tris hasn’t had a chance to fire a gun yet,” said Ace. “We were just about to start.”

“Don’t care,” said Eric.

Ace let go. Then she motioned me towards the nearest stall. 

“Show him,” she said. 

I guess I didn’t have a choice anymore. I stepped into the stall and reached into the drawer, slowly pulling out the practice weapon. It felt real. Ace stepped behind me and helped me load the cartridge. It was a real cartridge with real bullets. The weight was cold in my hand. Never in my life did I expect to hold a gun, let alone fire one. I felt as if, just by touching it, I could hurt someone.

“Feet apart, use both hands,” said Ace in a low voice. 

She stepped out of the stall and stood beside Eric, who was watching me intently. When I turned to look at them, Eric said, “You gonna shoot, or stare while someone shoots you?”

I turned back to the target. The man-shaped target. I remembered how cleanly Ace had killed Lady Rose, a perfect shot at the bridge of her brow. Right in the X in the center. 

It took all my strength to push Lady Rose from my mind, set my feet shoulder-width apart, and wrap both hands around the handle of the gun. It was heavier than I expected, hard to lift away from my body, but I wanted it to be as far from my face as possible. Then I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could.

_BANG!_

The recoil sent my hands flying back at my nose. I stumbled against the back of the stall. I didn’t know where my bullet went, but I knew it wasn’t near the target. Over the ringing in my ears, all I could hear was raucous laughter.

“Oh god,” Eric cackled. “At this rate, maybe she’ll make second-tier street patrol. Good luck, Dishwater.”

“Pulling out schoolchild nicknames, very mature,” said Ace.

Eric ignored the retort and turned to her, folding his arms. His knuckles were scabbed over, right where they would split if he punched something too hard. “What have you been doing lately?”

“Working,” said Ace.

Were they friends? My eyes flicked between Eric and Ace. I knew from the Dauntless transfers that callousness often translated to affection. Everything Eric did—lingering for small talk, teasing Ace—suggested that they were friends. But even after Eric was convinced of me being Dauntless, the way Ace stood, tense as a pulled wire, suggested they were something else. Rivals, maybe. Or (I grew afraid) a romantic relationship, past or future. 

“Max tells me he keeps trying to meet with you, and you don’t show up,” Eric said. “He requested that I find out what’s going on with you.”

Ace looked at Eric for a second before saying, “Tell him that I am satisfied with the position I currently hold.”

“So he wants to give you a job.”

The rings in Eric’s eyebrow caught the light. Maybe Eric perceived Ace as a potential threat to his position. My father once said that those who wanted power and got it lived in terror of losing it. That was why we had to give power to those who did not want it.

“So it would seem,” said Ace.

“And you’d rather work for Candor than your own faction.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well,” said Eric, “let’s hope he gets the point, then.”

He clapped Ace on the shoulder, a little too hard, and left. When the door closed, I slouched. I hadn’t realized I was so tense. 

“You know what,” said Ace, “I think we’re done here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder about this story's sister fic, "The Prodigal!" check it out if an ace-centric story sounds interesting to you
> 
> as always, i love your comments!


	25. Chapter 25

It was late, almost midnight, when we left the initiates’ wing. But the Pit was still busy, if not busier than before. Made sense that Dauntless would have its share of night owls. 

I was quiet for much of it. I was tired, especially since I hadn’t slept much last night, and fatigued from the long training session. But my mind was awake, buzzing like the faint hum of the blue nightlights. Ace and I sat near the chasm, sharing muffins from the Dauntless dining hall. I found myself running my fingers over the scar on my collarbone, over and over and over.

Ace noticed. “Where’s the usual million questions?”

I shrugged. They were there. But I wasn’t really sure which one to pick.

“You and Eric,” I finally said. “Are you two...friends?”

“We were in the same initiate class,” she said. “He transferred from Erudite.”

“What’s with ‘Dishwater?’”

“And the million questions are back,” said Ace. But she didn’t answer, just reached over and stole a chocolate chip from the top of my muffin.

I resumed touching the scar. A match for the fading one on my hand. The skin of the hands healed quickly; the skin over the heart did not. I had the option to get the newer scar removed, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. I had broken my vow with the gun and now I was afraid that even the scar would fade too fast. The avoidance in me wanted to forget the scar, forget the nightmare, forget the gunshot that echoed forever in my ears.

“Your tattoos,” I said. “Where did you get them?”

Ace gave me a strange look, then stood, as if she sensed the request on my tongue.

She led me up the web of ladders and bridges to a small shop in the rock wall. When we stepped inside, we were greeted by a Dauntless woman with long braids and dark eyes. She stepped away from the area she had been cleaning, which featured a chair and a small desk with a mirror.

“Ace,” she smiled. “Got your message. I’ll pass it on.”

“Thank you,” said Ace. “You closing soon?”

The woman shrugged. “I’ll make an exception.” Her eyes flicked to me. “Who’s it for?”

“Me,” I said quietly.

Nodding, the woman extended her hand for me to shake. “I’m Tori.”

“Tris,” I replied. I was getting the hang of my new Dauntless name.

“Nice to meet you, Tris. What’ll it be?”

I looked around at the artwork on the walls. Dauntless flames were everywhere. Blades and skulls and spiders and barbed wires. Art was a rarer thing nowadays, more common in Amity than anything. I supposed this was the Dauntless version of an artist’s studio. 

When I turned back to Tori, I saw her eyes resting on something below my face—my scar, peeking above my collar. She said to Ace, “Is this her?”

Ace nodded.

“They don’t look on tattoos too fondly in Candor,” said Tori.

For some reason, I wasn’t surprised that she knew me. 

“I know. I’m really sure,” I told her.

Tori inclined her chin, then said, “Follow me.” 

She took me back to the chair and handed me a book of designs to look at while she finished cleaning her equipment. It took me a while to find what I was looking for. But when I did, I pointed to it, and then pulled down my shirt collar to show her the scar.

“A rose,” I said. “With the scar as the stem.”

I touched the ridges of the faded stitches, soon to become thorns. A new vow. That whatever I became, however I healed, I would never forget.

* * *

The trains were off for the night. I would have to stay in Dauntless until morning. 

Ace promised she would have me back to Candor in time to get ready for the day, but I was still worried. Sneaking into Dauntless by night was one thing; sneaking out of it by day was another. What if someone saw me? What if something happened and I was late? What if—

I stole a glance at Ace as she unlocked her apartment door. She had four different keys for four different padlocks. Her face was focused, concentrated, and, god, so beautiful. Inadvertently, I gulped.

— what if I never made it through the night?

Ace’s apartment was large, but spartan in design. A kitchenette, a door that opened to a small bathroom, a double bed with a blue patchwork quilt tucked tight, almost Abnegation-style. The plain white wall at the back was decorated with one thing, black spray paint reading _“FEAR GOD ALONE”._ Ace hung her leather jacket in a closet next to three identical jackets. 

“You can use my shower. There’s clean shirts in the top drawer if you want something else to sleep in,” she told me. “And take the bed.”

“What about you?”

She didn’t answer, just got a beer from the fridge and stepped onto the balcony. Thunder rumbled through the open door and a gust of wind blew through the studio. But even when the lightning began to light up the sky, Ace just sat there, sipping her beer and watching the storm.

I found the nightclothes in the chest of drawers, folded in neat upright rows. The hot water knob of her shower was stiff from disuse, so I just used cold. The only mirror in the bathroom was tucked away inside the medicine cabinet. The efficiency, the care put into Ace’s living space, it all reminded me so painfully of Abnegation. When I tried to think about how the factionless lived—or even how the Dauntless, another faction, lived—I had never imagined that it could be so close to home.

I found a pair of stretchy shorts with a string that I had to wrap all the way around my waist for it to stay. Ace’s smallest black shirt still hung far below my fingertips. The collar of this one was much deeper, exposing the bandage over my new tattoo. 

I stepped out and sat on the bed. I could still see Ace on the balcony. It was raining now; her hair, face, and clothes were soaked. I pushed open the balcony door just a crack.

“Hey, I’m done with the shower,” I said. “Do you, uh, still need it?”

Ace just tilted her beer up again.

“Not yet,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

“Night.”

“Goodnight, Ace.”

I went to close the door, but then she turned and said, “Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d you know about the McCandless family? Did Irene tell you?”

I hesitated. “I think I’m getting better at playing against the odds,” I told her. “My mom’s maiden name is McCandless. She and Irene look alike. She also had marks on her ears, and I just figured out that they’re closed piercings. So I made an educated guess about where they came from. They say that the likelihood of having fraternal twins is hereditary on the mother’s side, and my brother and I are fraternal, so I’ve probably got a good network of cousins with twins. At least I hoped. I can’t believe I’m right.”

Ace nodded and finished off her beer. “Was Erudite somewhere in that aptitude test too?”

I shrugged. “It’s just logical. Or luck.”

“Logical, genius, lucky, same thing.”

Perhaps.

“So Tris McCandless,” said Ace. “That’s what we call you while you’re down here, huh?”

“All we can hope is that we don’t run into a real McCandless kid,” I nodded.

“Used to ride with a couple of them on the train. I could get them to vouch for you.”

“Would they?”

“Sure,” Ace said. “They’re so much like you, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. All nasty little troublemakers.”

I couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t wrong. 

Above our heads, lightning shattered the sky, white fissures on blue wine-bottle glass. A deafening thunderclap followed a split second later, and the rain began to fall harder. Still, Ace didn’t move, just tilted her head up and felt the water on her face. I closed the door more, leaving only an inch to speak to Ace.

“Do you do this often?” I asked. 

“Every time it rains,” she said.

“Why?”

“Feels good on the burns.”

I opened my mouth to ask the question that had lingered on my tongue ever since I first saw her flying from the Dauntless train—how she had gotten the burns. But I held myself. Ace would tell me when she felt comfortable. 

“Can I join you?”

“Not tonight,” she said. 

Would there be more nights like this? 

“Get some sleep,” she continued. “We’ll leave early, so no one notices you’re gone.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said, clearly surprised by the gratitude. “Thank you, in fact.”

“What for?”

She turned to give me a look. Not a smirk, since her mouth was still frowning, but not a glare, since she wasn’t mad. But something decidedly warm nonetheless. “For not asking about the burns.”

I smiled. “Goodnight, Ace.”

“Goodnight...Tris.”

When I climbed into bed and pulled the covers around me, I looked out the balcony door again. Ace was still sitting in the rain, staring out at the lightshow. 

She was smiling. 


	26. Chapter 26

Early the next morning, when I returned to the apartment, Katie’s nameplate was gone from the door. Her bedroom was open. Every surface was bare; the covers were even stripped from the mattress. So she’d done it. Katie was factionless.

Oona was still sleeping, but Aletheia was not. She gave me a snide glance as I passed her room. Then the glance turned into a stare when she saw my outfit—Ace’s oversized shirt and my torn leggings, spraypainted shoes, a bandage over my tattoo. Very, very Dauntless. 

“Wh—what—” Aletheia stammered.

I raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“Where the hell were you?”

“Oh.” I paused. “I got initiated into Dauntless overnight. Hopped a train, jumped off a few buildings, shot some guns, learned how to fight, got a tattoo. I think I did pretty good for a Stiff. Maybe I should have chosen that, instead.”

Aletheia’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish out of water. Her eyes flicked over me, trying to catch any hint that I wasn’t telling the truth. But she clearly came up empty. Finally, she squeaked, “Why are you telling me this?”

I smiled.

“Because no one will ever believe you,” I said.

* * *

 

I went to class. I fell asleep only once, to my surprise. Ace didn’t work that day, so I would return to Dauntless on Wednesday night to continue training. In the meantime, she instructed me, I should get rest and study for the final exams. I said yes, of course.

I had lied. I did not study. After Arguments, I went out, bought a stack of newspapers and a large coffee from Antigone’s, and returned to my room.

Ace had not yet heard anything from her contacts about a girl named Sajida. That mystery had to be put on hold. I had not heard from Irene, so the mysteries about me and about the division in Candor were quiet now, too. There were two mysteries left, however, that I could access with a few half-credits for the newsboys. The mystery of the factionless, and the mystery of the Erudite.

It took a few minutes to swallow my pride. I would read what the Erudite had to say about Abnegation.

As I sat in front of my spiderweb of notes on the wall and opened the first newspaper, I inhaled.

And the apartment doorbell rang. 

Like a flash, I was up. I pulled the bisexual flag up over the notes on the wall and pushed the newspapers under my bed. “Coming!” I yelled, trying to sound the least suspicious possible. I was careful to close my door without a slam.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a Candor. Just Miriam. I let my shoulders drop.

“Miriam,” I said.

Like usual, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She held out a small white envelope. “A letter, ma’am,” she mumbled. 

I frowned. “I didn’t know I could get mail.”

“It’s urgent,” Miriam replied. “I was told to run it to you, fast as I can.”

Frowning even more, I took it and thanked her. She hobbled away down the hallway, and I wondered if I had just witnessed a self-deprecating joke.

I returned to my room. The envelope was addressed only “Ms. Phoebe Prior” in a printed font. Inside was a small card, bearing one sentence:

_Check your goddamn email._

Sometimes, when sending chat messages to someone like Ravi or Oona, they would send a line composed only of question marks—like  _?????????????????????—_ to signify that they were confused. I had never understood why they didn’t simply type “I’m confused”. Until now. My reaction was precisely the energy of the line of question marks. It surpassed confusion. I pulled out my laptop and opened my email, cringing when I saw that I hadn’t opened it in two days. Must’ve been busy. I had fifty unread messages, most of them from Stacey, my Reasoning professor who liked to send emails for just about everything.

But one—sent yesterday—was marked with a red flag. Urgent. Sent from one Irene J. McCandless, Esquire.

 

_Ms. Prior,_

_Thank you for your interest in an internship with the Academic Integrity Department._

_Though I normally only grant this position to students who have completed initiation and are currently 1Ls at the Institute, I have reviewed your application and believe you are more than capable of starting earlier._

_In the three weeks remaining of initiation, I would like for you to shadow in my office at least once a week; ideally, Tuesday from 4-6 PM. I expect you to begin tomorrow. Does this time work for you?_

_Let me know as soon as possible._

_Regards,_

_Irene J. McCandless, Esq._

 

I read the email once. Then read it again. Tuesday, 4-6 PM. Today was Tuesday and it was 4:45.

I said a bad word. 

I scrambled to get ready. I wasn’t sure what I’d need to bring to a fake internship that was actually preparation for how to lie during the Full Unveiling. I assumed it would be my laptop, some legal pads, and a chipper attitude. At least I had two of those.

To my surprise, the security at the front of the Merciless Mart were expecting me and let me through. I guess I didn’t need Ace to work that magic when I had Irene in my pocket. Breathless, I stumbled out of the elevator into the Academic Integrity Department. The young secretary at the reception desk was the same as the first time I had been here, with Ace, and his eyes widened at the sight of me. 

“You have an appointment this time, go ahead,” he said hurriedly. He glanced around, as if Ace might pop out from a closed door and frighten him again. I was in too much of a rush to even find the humor in it.

Maybe if I had been a little more anxious, I wouldn’t have noticed that there was a light on in Irene’s office. 

But I did. I pulled my hand back from the handle. Through the frosted glass, I saw her, a white silhouette, with two tall, dark figures. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Perhaps her room really was soundproofed. But from the movements, I could tell they were conversing.

Inhaling, I knocked. Everyone froze. 

Then one of the dark figures moved to the door. I suddenly found myself face to face with just about the last person I wanted to see—Judge Lysander Morris, one pale eyebrow raised as he regarded me. 

“Speak of the devil and he doth appear,” said Morris. “Come in, Miss Prior.”

Now on edge, I stepped inside Irene’s office. Wonderful. My Investigative Technique professor, an actual master of lie detection, was here in my fake internship. And talking about me, judging by the greeting. Fear gripped my gut—had I been found out? Had Irene been found out? Was that the real reason why the secretary was on edge?

I looked at Irene. She sat at her desk, cool as a cucumber. The man standing next to her was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was about Irene’s age, maybe forty. Handsome, with short black hair and warm dark eyes, like Ace’s, and high cheekbones. His tie was curious, silver with intricate black embroidery.

“Miss Prior,” said Irene, “I’d like you to meet Jack Kang, chief executive director of Candor.”

My eyes widened. Our faction leader. I had heard about him from my father—he was a familiar face in the Abnegation council. By most faction standards, he was a young leader, only thirty-nine years old. This often led the councilmembers to write him off or label him as arrogant. But he was a legend at the Institute. He was a brilliant lawyer, getting a perfect score on the initiate exams, passing the bar exam in the second year, and becoming senior counsel for Candor within a few years of graduation.

“Mr. Kang,” I said breathlessly, shaking his hand. “It’s—an honor to meet you—”

Kang nodded. “I’m just a man,” he said plainly. “No honor needed. But I have heard many things about you, Miss Prior.”

I looked at Irene again, then at Morris. I couldn’t find expression on either of their faces. For members of a faction that valued emotional openness so highly, the people in this room were impossible to read.

“What kind of things?” I asked.

Irene cleared her throat. “Lysander and Jack stopped by to inquire about you,” she said. “Word got out that I was considering an initiate for the internship. Curiosities were piqued further when you _failed to show up.”_

I grimaced. “I’m sorry. I forgot to check my email.” Not a lie. They all ate it up.

Folding his hands behind his back, Morris walked around to face Irene and Kang. “Which proves my point, Irene,” said Morris. “Like I said, I enjoy having Miss Prior in my class. But I’m afraid she is an average student at best, and not yet mature enough to handle such a responsibility.”

That hurt a little. But I was getting used to brutal honesty, at least. Morris was right; forgetting to check my email when Irene specifically told me to keep an eye out for it wasn’t very mature. 

Kang frowned. “Average?”

“I did say average, yes,” said Morris. “Her midterm scores do not suggest that she will easily pass the final.”

“Yet you _were_ the one to insist that Miss Prior’s performance in the Beauregard investigation was, and I quote, ‘exemplary’,” said Kang.

Morris’ mouth twitched. Frustration, maybe? 

“Yes,” he replied, “but if anything, that suggests that Miss Prior should take up an internship with Major Crimes, not Academic Integrity. In any case, Miss Prior may yet fail the final exams. Perhaps she may not wish to complete the Full Unveiling. It’s too early to hire her now.”

“Lysander, she’s just shadowing,” said Irene, leaning back in her chair. “She won’t accept anything until after the Unveiling. What’s it to you?”

“Because I believe you have better candidates among the initiates,” said Morris.

“Such as?” said Irene.

“Oona Posner, transfer from Amity. Average of 84 on the midterms, one point short of passing. One of the most honest initiates I have met. If any initiate deserves special treatment, it is Miss Posner.”

“David Posner’s daughter?” asked Kang.

“Yes.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Kang nodded. 

“Miss Posner hasn’t even applied for the position,” said Irene. “Miss Prior came to me in person and asked. I don’t know about you, Judge, but I consider initiative a more valuable trait than a glowing recommendation.”

Morris’ pale eyes narrowed. Then they turned to me. I almost startled, but managed to hold my ground. I held his gaze until he turned back to Irene.

“I always had the impression that you were more selective with whom you let on your staff, Irene,” said Morris. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

Irene lifted her head. If she could see, I would imagine she was staring him down from behind the dark glasses. Perhaps, in her own way, she was. 

“If you wish to continue saying nothing important, I wish for you to leave,” she said.

Morris blinked in surprise. Without another word, he turned, took his coat and hat from the hook on the wall, and left, the door slamming behind him.

“Jack, I assume you’re still here,” said Irene.

“That was quite a show,” Kang commented.

“You really didn’t need to be here. I can deal with Morris,” Irene told him.

“He’s been visiting you more frequently nowadays.”

“Well, I’m getting better at making him leave. All is well, I assure you.”

But Kang didn’t seem assured. His keen eyes met Irene’s glasses, as if he could see right through them.

“If there’s a new reason for division in our faction, you’ll tell me,” he said. 

She smiled. “I’ll let you know if I see something.”

Kang sighed and nodded to me. “Good luck in initiation, Miss Prior.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

Kang got his coat and hat, just as Morris had, and turned to leave. But in the door, he stopped. “Don’t think that your blind jokes go over my head, Irene,” he said. “I hope you’ll start being honest with me.”

“Go do your own job, Jack,” said Irene.

She stood and locked the door behind him.

“Well, that was an ordeal,” she said, rubbing her temples. “Arguing about your credentials for a fake internship. Hilarious.”

“I’m not really sure I understood what just happened,” I confessed.

She moved to a coffee maker in the back of the room and clicked her thermos in place. “Me neither,” said Irene. “Coffee? I don’t have cream or sugar, you’d have to go to the break room for that.”

“No thank you,” I said. I had already drank two cups today. I was afraid I might be getting addicted to the stuff.

“Well. Let’s see how to put it—I’m glad you were able to meet Jack Kang, at least; he’ll be a judge at the Full Unveilings. He’s a good man… changed a lot of people’s minds about what a model Candor looks like.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he was selected to represent Candor, there were doubts that someone could love the people of this city so much. But he genuinely does. Most of us, we’re so full of shit, and we let everyone know it. But Jack, all he’s full of—well, it’s all love. He pushes us hard. Never sugarcoats. His ideas have made him one of the most controversial leaders in faction history. But it’s all for love.”

Controversial. I knew what that meant from one side of it. It meant that my father often came home sighing about how Candor wanted to change the law to somehow, in some way, harm us. I racked my brain to remember some of the sighs. Kang had proposed a bill to put cameras in street police uniforms. Wanted a law that would allow juvenile criminals to take the literacy and aptitude tests. Prosecuted an Abnegation volunteer accused of hitting a factionless boy. All terrible, terrible things. 

And all for love of the city. 

“As for Lysander Morris,” continued Irene, “we go back a while. It was his first year teaching when I was an initiate, just a part-time job to augment judicial work, so he didn’t take it too seriously. I decided it would be to my benefit to make his job hard for him. Milking my disability, critiquing him for making his classes too vision-centric. Of course, they were, and I failed the final because I couldn’t see a mismatched color of fabric on a couch. I appealed on basis of discrimination and he was forced to take all those diversity training courses from HR.”

She chuckled.

“He’s better now. An excellent professor, you’re lucky to have him. But he doesn’t like that I’m his boss now. And there’ll always be a little of the Erudite in him, that’s for sure.”

“Erudite?”

“Lysander was a transfer. He doesn’t say it, but you can tell anyway—he’s got that scent. Diluted cologne. Not enough for most to notice, but just enough to suggest something.”

Cologne, like makeup, was not looked upon kindly in Candor. It was a guise, a mask to shape how others perceived you. Only now that Irene mentioned it did I realize she was right.

“Also, I have unlimited access to faction transfer records,” added Irene. “So I know.”

“What does him being Erudite have to do with you?” I asked.

Her coffeemaker pinged. She pulled her thermos out and sat, sipping slowly.

“If you asked half of the city, I should be factionless,” Irene replied. “These eyes dictate my natural lot in life, so why should a faction go out of its way to adjust for me? That’s how it is to the Erudite. And to the Dauntless. And to the—to the Abnegation.”

Pain laced her voice. I felt it in my own throat. I thought of my mother, by my side on a service trip when I was younger. She tried to give a blanket to a factionless woman with no legs. The woman threw the blanket away and spat at my mother’s feet. I didn’t understand why then. I knew the Abnegation’s policy for disabled people—they were meant to be cared for, not placed in charge of caring for others. That was the only time, in theory, when someone might be removed from Abnegation initiation. But it didn’t happen because we never had disabled initiates. Was there a reason for that? Did every disabled kid just know not to transfer to Abnegation? 

“I’m sorry,” I blurted.

“Don’t apologize. It’s just how it is.”

“Only Amity and Candor take—um—disabled initiates?”

“Really, it’s only Amity. I wish I could say Candor was any better than Erudite. But that’s the flaw in a faction that encourages everyone to stand for what they believe; nobody forgets how they were raised.”

I looked at the hands in my lap. My palms were scraped and calloused from last night’s training. She was right. I had never met a faction so diverse in opinions, so varied in personality, and sometimes the debate was beautiful. But when it came to matters of who belonged and who didn’t, was the argument worth it anymore?

“So that’s why you left Dauntless,” I said. 

She didn’t reply for a while. Then she said, “You really visted Dauntless, didn’t you?”

“Last night,” I said. 

“I thought Ace was smarter than that. But I knew it would happen. How did I know? How was I right?”

“I got a tattoo,” I told her. “I also realized that I have cousins, and that my mom used to have piercings. She says hello, by the way. Don’t overwork yourself.”

“Natalie. God.”

“So you’re my aunt?”

“That’s really not important.”

“I think it’s important. I’ve never had an aunt before.”

“You’ll never have an aunt, ever,” said Irene sharply. “I don’t want to talk about Natalie or Dauntless, understood?”

I fell silent. I had hoped that the conversation was turning a lighter direction. Obviously, I’d read the room wrong.

Groaning, Irene laced her hands and rested her forehead in them. She took off her glasses, and I wondered if she was going to get the pillow out again and scream into it, but she just rubbed her eyes. I tried to catch a glimpse of them this time. They were just a normal brown. No magical silver cloudiness.

For a while, she just sat there in silence. Then she put her glasses back on and asked quietly, “When did you go?”

“Last night,” I said. 

“Did anyone recognize you as Candor?”

“Ace just said I was a fifteen-year-old Dauntless.”

“To whom?”

“A Dauntless leader.” I hesitated to remember the name, then said, “Eric. He believed it.”

“Are you sure?”

“His body language said so.”

Irene typed a note into her computer. “I’m going to trust your judgment against my own,” she said. “I’ll allow you to keep this up, but if it goes pear-shaped, I’m not getting involved.”

“Okay,” I replied softly. I had to be extra careful now.

“One last thing,” she said. “Where’s your tattoo?”

Now I hesitated. Why did she need to know? “Left collarbone,” I said. “I made a rose out of the scar.”

Irene said a bad word. Several of them, actually. 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, that’s bad. That’s very, very bad.”

“Ace knew the tattoo artist,” I said. “Her name’s Tori. I think she’s on our side.”

“Tori doesn’t matter, sides don’t matter,” Irene told me. “You don’t understand, Phoebe. You can’t do the Full Unveiling with that tattoo out in the open. They will find out about your Divergence, and then they will kill you.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know ive updated 3 times this week but nobody's reading this thing and i don't give a shit anymore, i just want to have one completed story on this account lmfaoooooo

I blinked, bewildered.

“What?” I asked. “Having a tattoo doesn’t mean I’m Divergent. They won’t kill me for it.”

“But they’ll ask where you got it,” said Irene.

“So I’ll lie. You said you’ll teach me how to lie.”

“The only tattoo shops are in Dauntless, you can’t lie. They’ll find out that you went there.”

“Then I tell them that I was learning to defend myself and couldn’t get the risk license.”

“And when they ask what getting a tattoo has to do with defending yourself?”

Oh, no. Now I got it.

“By getting that thing, you’ve proclaimed to the world that you don’t follow the normal pattern of thinking. That you don’t _want_ to conform. You said it’s a rose? And that’s the scar you got from that factionless woman? My God, Phoebe, that’s even worse. You might as well have written ‘I’m a critic of the faction system’ on your forehead.”

“But it’s not on my forehead,” I retorted. “It’s on my chest. It’s not hard to hide.”

Irene stood up. “Do you really know so little about the Full Unveiling?”

I stood up too. We were the same height. Eye to eye, if not for the glasses. “I know that I have to tell all my secrets,” I said. “And I know that I can lie because I’m Divergent. You told me that I can do that—”

“You can avoid talking about your aptitude test results. You cannot avoid a tattoo like that,” she snarled. “You will be naked—metaphorically and literally. The uniform of the Full Unveiling is only a loincloth, and the room where it happens is a room with walls of one-way mirrors. You can hide nothing, Miss Prior, nothing other than what’s in your mind.”

Oh, no, indeed.

Involuntarily, I hugged myself, deeply uncomfortable. I didn’t like this new information at all. Wearing a t-shirt was hard enough for me; standing naked in front of the whole faction? Now I understood why some initiates could pass the exams but refuse to take the Full Unveiling. It was a different kind of vulnerability. I hated that my first, immediate thought was a fear—what if there was a man like Beauregard in the audience?

“I can get the tattoo removed,” I said weakly. Lars and the other Dauntless transfers had talked about removing theirs.

“You’d better,” replied Irene.

“I will.”

“You’re lying.”

I stayed silent. Irene sighed for the umpteenth time since I’d stepped into the office.

“It’s not an option, Miss Prior. Your choices are to remove it and take the Full Unveiling as planned, to keep it and die, or to leave the faction. That’s all I have to say.”

“That can’t be it,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “No. That can’t be all my options. Why would Candor kill me for being Divergent? It’s what I am.”

“That’s not how it works. It’s not a single-faction issue. You mention Divergence, we’re required by law to report it.”

“What do you mean, report it?” I asked. “To who?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“But _kill_ me?”

“They would. They’d make it look like an accident. Maybe a suicide. Or you fail initiation. Four weeks later they find your body in the canal, say you overdosed. Sometimes you just disappear. Time passes, people forget.” 

She sounded tired. Like she’d given this explanation to a hundred Divergents before me. Maybe she had. I looked at her for a while, trying to read anything else her, but couldn’t. No wonder she was able to lie so well. When the eyes were hidden, when the very way she moved to navigate the room was new, it was all the more difficult to know what she was thinking. It made me bitter. I wanted to think she had good intentions. But all the mystery was frustrating.

“I shouldn’t have to lie,” I told her. “Not here.”

Irene sighed. “I know. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Maybe. 

“Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll get the tattoo removed and I’ll do the Full Unveiling as planned. So what now?”

Irene regarded me in her own way. She reached out her hands and I gave them, letting her feel my hands. Her thumb traced a scrape on my palm from yesterday’s training. 

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you’ll ask Ace to begin the second stage of Dauntless training.”

* * *

 

“No,” said Ace. 

I frowned. “Why not?” 

Ace’s gaze darted. It was Wednesday morning. We were in the private Dauntless office, where I had tracked her down. She was lounging on the couch and eating a breakfast of six hard-boiled eggs, which was excessive, in my opinion. 

“Can’t she just give you the truth serum?” she grumbled. “It can’t be hard to get.”

“Actually,” I cleared my throat, having learned this answer and prepared it thoroughly, “the Academic Integrity department keeps careful records of the truth serum. If you want access, you have to file an official request. Even someone like Irene can’t work around it.”

Ace mumbled something along the lines of “hrm hrm bureaucratic red tape hrm hrm.” She drove her fork right through an egg and ate it in one bite.

I tried another card. I puckered my bottom lip and said, “Please?”

“No.”

“But why?”

“I have some things I need to tie up.”

An irritatingly vague answer. I folded my arms. “Like what?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Okay. So why can’t we train?”

“We can train,” said Ace. “Just not stage two.”

“Irene said—”

“I _know_ what Irene said; I know what she’s asking me to do. Damn it.”

Ace stabbed an egg with her fork so hard that it slipped out and rolled onto the floor. She stopped to glare at it. 

“That’s your fault. Pick it up,” she said, pointing the fork at me. 

“It’s on the floor, you can’t eat it,” I said.

“I can and I will.”

Gingerly, I knelt and picked up the egg. “It’s covered in dirt.”

Ace bit one of the clean eggs. “So?”

“That’s disgusting,” I told her.

“Rinse it off.”

“Just get a new one,” I said. “You were saying how Talon keeps stealing your food, go steal some of his.”

“You’re holding the egg right now,” said Ace. “Put it in my bowl.”

She sounded completely serious, but there was a twinkle in her eye that made me laugh. “No!”

“It’s not difficult, Phoebe. Hand goes to bowl, hand releases egg, Ace eats egg.” 

“I don’t know how you can say that with a straight face,” I snickered. “Hey, let’s make a deal—you give me stage two, I’ll give you the egg.”

That did it; Ace’s grin finally broke out, and she put her bowl aside to stand up. 

“You’re a little shit,” she teased. “Gimme that.”

She lunged. But I remembered what she’d taught; I stepped, slid, and evaded easily. 

“No, this is leverage,” I said.

“It’s an _egg,”_ Ace insisted, making another swipe. 

I danced away, moving to her right to take advantage of her blind spot. My hip hit the desk and Ace grinned, thinking she had me cornered, but I was a step ahead. I dropped to my knees and crawled under the desk to the other side. 

“Stage two or hunger,” I called.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re chasing an egg.”

She lunged one last time. I darted and clambered onto the couch. I had thought to stand on the armrest and hold it high, but Ace whirled around and bumped into me, and with a shriek I fell backwards. The egg slipped out of my hands. Surprised, Ace stumbled, and then she fell too. 

We were nose to nose again, sprawled on the couch, Ace above me. 

I was speechless. So was she. It was inescapable now—how her body weight pressed into mine, the way our legs tangled when we fell, the unique scents of well-worn leather and soap and something else distinctly _her._

I wanted her to kiss me. I wanted it more than anything. But on the precipice, now I was afraid, and maybe that’s what she sensed that made her pull back and stand up. 

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “That—keeps happening.”

“Yeah,” I laughed breathily, sitting up and fixing my hair. Inside, I was cursing. She definitely thought I was some desperate little kid now. If I was only a Dauntless, if I was only an equal to her, maybe it would’ve been different. But I wasn’t. I was just a strange little Candor girl, meddling in things she didn’t understand. “That was dumb.”

“I didn’t really want the egg,” said Ace. 

“I meant—nevermind.”

“What?”

“I meant the falling part. That was dumb.”

“Yeah,” said Ace, rubbing the back of her neck. “That was...that was dumb.”

It was uncomfortable and awkward for a while. Ace looked around for the fallen egg, picked it up, and tossed it out. 

“Look,” she finally sighed, shoving her hands in her pockets, “if you’re gonna start stage two, I…I can’t do it tonight. There’s a lot of things going on.”

“Right,” I nodded. “That’s fine.”

“Tonight we can move on to offensive maneuvers. I’ll teach you how to hit. We’ll…begin stage two this weekend.”

“Right. Right.”

“Right,” she said. “Well...you should get to class.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes as she unlocked the door, checked for witnesses, and let me out. For a few moments after the door closed behind me, I stayed there, still in a daze. I brushed the wrinkles out of my shirt and sighed. 

“Right,” I whispered.


	28. Chapter 28

That night I brought a backpack up to the roof. “What’s in there?” asked Ace. 

“Change of clothes and papers,” I said. “I need to study.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Carrying Candor notes into a Dauntless compound. Good way to get caught.”

“They’re not Candor. They’re Erudite.”

I took off my white shirt, wadded it up, and put it under my journal and the newspapers. Underneath I was wearing a black tank top. My stomach tightened as the wind hit the bare skin of my shoulders and as I saw the rose tattoo on my chest. It was almost all healed now, vibrant red and green inside an outline of black ink. I could only hope it distracted enough from my skinny, freckled arms and flat chest. Not that I cared what Ace thought about how I looked…or anything.

“What’s in the Erudite newspapers that you’d care about?” asked Ace.

“You know,” I said, “news.”

She offered to carry my bag so I could concentrate on the journey across the buildings. She let me lead, testing my memory of the way. 

This time, when the train came, I jumped on without needing help. Then I sat at the back of the car and opened one of the papers.

It was hard to focus. Ace sat in the opening of the train car, as if daring the wind and speed to rip her away. I couldn’t stop thinking of her. There was still a weird atmosphere between us, at least, I felt one. Ace either didn’t feel it or was just very good at hiding it. 

“You know,” she commented, “I’ve only seen one other Candor initiation, but I’m pretty sure you need to study for them to do well.”

“I do study,” I said.

“By reading Erudite papers?”

“By going to class.”

She laughed. “That’s not enough.”

“What does a Dauntless know about studying?” I raised an eyebrow. 

Ace leaned back and put her hands behind her head, landing with a soft _thud_ on the train car floor. “I was someone before I was Dauntless, Phoebe.”

“Oh.” Yes. She had gone to school, and she’d passed the literacy exams. The first factionless to do so. It was amazing, now that I really thought about it—almost confusing. 

“How did that work?” I asked quietly. “Passing the literacy exams? You told me that the factionless schools make that impossible.”

“They do,” said Ace. 

“What about you?”

“I was lucky.” She kicked her legs idly.

“What do you mean?”

“Being smart doesn’t matter. Hard work doesn’t either. I met a hundred kids smarter and more hardworking than me and none of them passed.”

“Why not?”

“Some worked full time. That’s sixty hours a week, down there. If you’re a single-earner home, it’s eighty. Some had kids. Some had their parents’ kids. The ones that took the exams, there’s not many, since everyone knows nobody will pass.”

Ace sighed. 

“The thing is,” she continued, “the reason none of ‘em pass is they’re not taught what they need to pass. The curriculum between the faction schools and the project schools, they’re the same, right? But there’s different tests, and the factionless test is harder.”

“That’s not fair,” I protested. 

“Candor thought it was,” said Ace. “ _Zarcero v. Erudite._ Precedent for the Rising Stars Act, which states that factionless children wishing to take the aptitude test must pass advanced versions of the literacy tests to prove that they are capable of succeeding in the faction lifestyle. The rationale is that factionless children carry faulty genetics from their parents, who couldn’t succeed, and therefore need longer, more difficult testing to make sure the kids are capable. Conversely, faction-born children carry good genetics from intelligent parents, so they don’t need as much insurance.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. But it’s real. It’s kept pretty quiet—factionless kids think that studying their class notes will be enough, they’ve practiced until they can ace the regular test, and then the advanced calculus hits them like a train.”

“How did you pass?”

Her eyes were closed, but her brow and jaw tightened. “Like I said,” she murmured, “I got lucky.”

It was a lie if I had ever heard one. My stomach twisted at a terrible thought—Ace had once said that the only way to get anywhere in the factionless schools was by bribery. Bribery of the worst and most tragic kind. Had Ace…?

“I’m really good at math,” she cut my thought off. “That’s all.”

My shoulders relaxed. At least that part wasn’t a lie.

“So did you ask about my test because you really wanted to know,” Ace continued, “or was it just to get me off your ass about not studying?”

“I am studying,” I told her. “I mean...I will. I’m preoccupied with a lot of things.”

“Like reading Erudite papers.”

“Right.”

“And tracking down missing girls.”

“Because someone needs to find them.”

“And harassing Irene.”

“I wasn’t harassing her.”

“She had a lot of choice words for you.”

I ignored that.

I had been skimming the papers the whole time, searching for things that jumped out at me. Not things that matched, necessarily. But I was learning to look for things that didn’t. 

“Ace,” I said, “what do you know about the problem with the Erudite?”

She snorted. “Which one?”

“What’s happening right now,” I said. “Trying to make changes to the faction system, and all that. Blaming the Abnegation for it.”

“I’ve heard of that,” she shrugged. “Don’t think it’ll amount to much.”

“Look at this.” I motioned her to come over and look at my work. I folded two separate pages and placed them side by side, highlighting two passages in yellow. “This first one was written right after Lady Rose died.”

Ace squinted as she read it. _“The blood of Lady Rose is on all of our hands—our desire for peace has outweighed the cosmic demand for justice, and we have become blind to the suffering under our noses. It is up to us to change this system, to remove those from power who misuse it, and to answer the outcry of those we have ignored and oppressed for generations.”_ She frowned at me. “That’s all true. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “But that’s the problem. This was written by Antoinette Manson, an Erudite journalist who transferred from Candor four years ago. She typically writes pieces about the justice system, having come from inside it. Violently anti-Abnegation—she did a whole series of reasons to remove the faction from the faction system.”

“That’s a little harsh,” said Ace.

I shrugged. “Not really. Garden-variety criticism, actually. If there’s anything Erudite can agree on, it’s that Abnegation is useless at running the government.”

She snorted. “Touché.”

“But she’s always been pretty pro-factionless. She had a lot of milder pieces before this, analyzing the few accounts we have of ancient societies, questioning whether a society like ours is really the best way to keep the peace. Sometimes she even cited some of the things Sajida Touma was researching—People v. Ophelia, _Criticisms of a Selfless Governance._ A lot of controversial theories. This was just the first incidence of actually calling for action.”

“So what’s up with it?”

“This.” I pointed to the highlighted portion of the second folded newspaper. “After the call to action piece, Antoinette stopped appearing in the papers for a week. That’s not out of the ordinary, since not every journalist writes in every edition. But this article is the first she wrote when she returned. It was published the same day the two men tried to murder Beauregard.”

 _“This blood continues to stain our hands,”_ Ace read aloud. _“With every day we sit in complacency, the situation in the projects becomes more dangerous. We have tolerated the rise of violent thugs, the breeding of Divergent, the decline of conscience and respect for due process of law, and sabotage by the Candor and Abnegation of our forward progress. Will we turn a blind eye to the bloodshed in our own streets? Will we allow the idealist and the self-righteous to dictate the fates of thousands of people? Or will we rise up once and for all, united as one faction, hand in hand with our brothers and sisters in the projects?”_

“It’s a different attack,” I said. “On the surface, it sounds pro-factionless, but the focus changed. It’s not about changing the system as a whole—it’s targeting Abnegation and Candor specifically, which Antoinette never did before. And it calls the factionless our brothers and sisters at the end, but in the beginning, they were violent thugs who didn’t respect the law. The blame’s on the factionless, not the factions.”

“You’re right,” said Ace, her eyes wide. “Look at that, in the second one.

“ _United as one faction_.”

“Like the Erudite aren’t even part of the problem.”

“Even though she makes it clear in the first piece that it’s their fault too.”

Above our heads, the train whistled. Ace stood up and looked out. 

“We’re almost here,” she said. “Do you need me to—   
uh—”

Her face reddened. I shoved the newspapers in my backpack, an excuse not to meet her eyes. 

“Actually, I think I can jump on my own,” I said. 

She nodded. Maybe in relief. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I said, equally relieved.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

As the train approached the Dauntless roof, I stood and handed Ace the backpack again. Our fingers brushed. Maybe she felt the nervous trembling as I looked out at the oncoming roof, further than it had seemed when I flew over it in Ace’s arms. 

She slung the backpack over her shoulders and reached out her hand again, clasping it around mine.

“We can jump together,” she said. 

My heartbeat quickened. When I met her eyes, she was smiling slightly.

We didn’t have time to exchange words. We stepped back, Ace said, “Now,” and we leapt. Flew. 

A weightless moment, and then my feet slammed into solid ground and jarred all the way up my legs. The rough landing sent me stumbling, but Ace was quick and caught me, letting me lean back against her. She was laughing.

“Not bad, not bad,” she said. “Legs were a bit... _stiff_ on the landing, but not bad.”

I started to say thank you until I caught the pun. “Noooo,” I groaned, which made her cackle more.

I was prepared to jump off the roof into the pit with the net again, but Ace beckoned me to the other edge and helped me climb down a fire escape instead. “Since you jumped off the train, I’ll give you a pass on the net fall,” she explained. 

“So there _was_ a ladder alternative,” I said.

She made a face up at me. “Yeah. But on the more practical side, Eric must’ve seen us pass under one of the main corridor cameras. I’d rather avoid a confrontation with him.”

I nodded. I did not like Eric. Something about him was...slimy.

“So about the journalist,” said Ace, climbing over the railing of the fire escape to a ledge on the side of the building. The stairs at that section had given out from years of neglect, so Ace gingerly turned and lowered herself from the ledge to the next level of the fire escape. I watched her carefully, knowing that she would expect me to copy her movements.

“Right,” I said. “Something about it—it’s just not right. I know people change their minds. But—”

I paused as I also climbed onto the ledge. To my relief, it felt easier than it had looked, since I was smaller and had more purchase. Ace helped me as I dropped down to the fire escape again. I thought about how to explain myself, how to describe the deep gut instinct that told me when something wasn’t quite right. Finally I just shook my head.

“It's not just Antoinette Manson, either. A lot of the papers are like this. One day, it’s that sort of revolution talk, trying to get the factions to see that they’re the problem; the next day, it’s calling the factionless the problem.”

“Yeah,” said Ace. Then she sighed. “Though I can’t help but think it’s just—how it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every day, it gets harder to be factionless. You watch the papers long enough, you’ll see less and less people standing up for the little guy, until it seems like there’s none left.”

“But that’s terrible. There has to be something going   
on—”

“There is. It’s called life being unfair,” said Ace. She stopped by a window and pushed it open, climbing inside. “The only thing you can do about it is put those papers away, focus on your exams, and become one of the good guys.”

“I’m getting tired of people telling me that there’s nothing I can do,” I muttered. I climbed in after her and we stood at the end of a long, dark hall.

“Enduring isn’t nothing,” said Ace. 

We passed into the Pit and through the throngs of people. I tried to act casual, but let my eyes scan for familiar faces. Ace had told me earlier about some of the McCandless kids she knew. An eighteen-year-old, Lilith. Raphael, a thirteen-year-old. An aunt, Hana McCandless-Pedrad, and cousins Ezekiel and Uriah. A dozen other second and third cousins, a strong lineage of Dauntless. My red hair was nowhere in the living lineage, though sometime long ago there must have been a Caucasian McCandless, because some were lighter-skinned. Every once in a while, I would meet eyes that looked almost like my mother’s; I would catch a gait like my brother’s out of my peripheral vision; I would see freckles and a grin that I was learning from the mirror. Faction didn’t matter. Naming didn’t matter. Choosing Ceremony didn’t matter. My family was all around me. The feeling in my chest was somewhere between homesickness and homecoming. 

I watched Ace carefully as we left the Pit and she took me back to the training room. Did she have family here, biological or found? When she left the projects, who did she leave behind? I didn’t know. She was becoming more of a mystery to me every day. Somehow, she managed to be unlike any Dauntless I had ever known and unlike any factionless I had ever known; living by philosophies shunned by both—philosophies of keeping her head down and following the rules. 

We warmed up that day by reviewing evasive maneuvers. It brought back (for both of us, I safely assumed) memories of an egg and a fall just earlier this morning. Nothing was said about them. Once Ace was satisfied, she took me to the back with the punching bags. 

“We’ll start with hand strikes, then kicks,” she explained. “When you’re striking, don’t think of it as just your arm or your leg making the movement. You are using your whole body to strike, using the same concepts of balance and weight distribution that we talked about in evasion.”

“Like a dance,” I said.

“Yes,” she nodded, “but also, no. A dance is planned. This is more like—like conversation. You can’t plan what the other person’s going to say. You can practice your arguing points, sure. But you can’t expect them at a time. So you have to think on your feet.”

“And watch the opponent,” I finished. “The first pillar of arguing is the practice of listening.”

Ace snapped her fingers. “There you go.”

She named a few different strikes, demonstrating each one on a punching bag. As I began, she folded my hands into the proper form, thumb outside, wrist straight, and did the motions on the punching bag next to mine for me to follow. 

I caught on as we practiced. Like with the dodging, it took a while to match the movements of my body to hers. Even then, I felt like I wasn’t doing something right—I was bony, awkward, like a straw man punching a wall; the leather stung my knuckles bright red and the bag barely moved no matter how hard I hit it. Next to me, Ace stood straight and watched critically for a few moments. Sweat dripped down my brow.

“You don’t have much muscle,” she said, “which means you’re better off using your elbows for a powerful blow. Palm to fist, like this.”

She demonstrated and I mirrored it, driving my elbow into the bag. Still hurt. I slipped a little, skinning it. Ace nodded and said, “Good.”

Suddenly, she came behind me and pressed a hand to my stomach. I couldn’t help myself; I gasped.

“Keep the tension here,” she said. Maybe she was going to say something else, but it was at that moment that she seemed to register the accidental gasp. She pulled away quickly.

“I—can teach you some exercises to, um, strengthen your core,” she added, gaze darting. “So...keep practicing.”

She turned back to her own bag, her back to me. For the few seconds after, I could still feel the pressure of her palm, the heel of her palm touching one side of my ribcage, her fingertips brushing the other side. It didn’t help that Ace had abandoned her shirt again. Her sports bra today was dark red and aligned down her spine were miscellaneous tattoos. At the nape of her neck was a cross with a snake entwined around it. Her shoulders were emblazoned with flames that looked like an angel’s wings. Most of her skin, though, was striped with scars—diagonal, pulled down from left to right, the same wound from the same weapon. She’d been whipped. The scars, like the one on her face, were at least five to eight years old. It made my stomach twist. I wondered what kind of monster would whip a young girl. I could only hope that I didn’t know their name.

I turned my focus to the bag, making my punches short and sharp, putting the power into my elbow strikes and back fist strikes. Later we covered kicks, which were harder, and which left the tops of my feet raw and red and my hips stiff. And long, long afterwards, she took me back to the shooting range and I tried the gun again. I still did not like it, not one bit. But she taught me how to aim and by the end of it, I could hit the edge of the target. 

I was too tired to do anything, so we returned to Ace’s apartment. As she unlocked the door, I looked down at my tattoo. I didn’t want to remove it. It had hurt like the dickens to get and I liked it; I couldn’t let it go to waste. Maybe I could explain. Maybe there was some way that I could hide it. Makeup? I had never worn makeup before. I didn’t know how to use it.

As we stepped inside, Ace saw me looking at it and said, “It looks nice, by the way.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But Irene said I have to remove it. For the Full Unveiling.”

Ace was quiet. She went to the fridge and instead of a beer, pulled out a pitcher of water. Out of habit I didn’t want to ask for it, lest I be an inconvenience. But she poured me a glass anyway.

“Phoebe, I... I need to tell you something,” she said haltingly, looking at the glasses. Our fingers brushed when she gave one to me.

“Anything,” I said.

She led me out onto the balcony. Today, the night skies were clear, and below us were the dark shadows of buildings. The air was warm and still. We stood next to each other and leaned against the railing.

“When you take that test,” said Ace slowly, like she was struggling to piece the words together, “the Full Unveiling, I mean—taking the truth serum—if you’re on a strong enough dose, you learn things about yourself. There’s no escaping them. Because you’re—you know, you know what—there are things you can do to hide them inside yourself. But it’s eye opening. Sometimes it even surprises you with what you know.”

I frowned. “Ace, what are you talking about?”

“If we’re going to start the second stage of training, I want to know something,” she replied. Now all the words spilled. Tumbling over each other. She wouldn’t meet my eyes and fiddled with her hands. “The second stage is like the Full Unveiling. It reveals parts of you that you would rather not see. It makes you understand your own head in ways that humans really shouldn’t.”

Now I was silent. Oh.

“Irene asked to show you inside my head,” Ace said. “When I do...you’re going to learn things. And it might change the way you think about me.”

“It can’t be that bad—”

“It’s not bad. I mean—I don’t know. I haven’t shown anyone like this. I don’t know if it’s bad.”

“Can’t you tell me?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I can detect lies now, Ace.”

“I’d rather you see it. I only know that—I need to know something. I need to know how you feel about me, as the person you know me to be, the former factionless, current Dauntless, me. Just Ace.”

Again, I fell silent. Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but because I did. I knew painfully well. I wanted to say that I was confused, I was doubtful, and above all I was scared, because I only knew one Ace and that Ace was already frightening enough as it is. She was frightening because she did things to me that I had never felt before; she made my heart weak and my hands tremble. She was my best friend. She was my beloved. She burned me.

Honesty had never been so hard, ever.

Finally I admitted, “I like you. A lot.”

I looked up to meet her eyes. We did, for a second. She pulled away first. 

“And I think I love you. A little.” My heart pounded. “You’re the coolest, bravest person I’ve ever met. You’re funny without trying and you’re nice when you think you’re not at all. But I don’t understand you. I feel like I can’t trust you sometimes. There’s things you’re not telling me, things that don’t line up, and it scares me.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“If the second stage helps me make sense of this all, I want to do it,” I said. “My life is so full of unknowns, I want to be sure of something.”

“Yeah.” Ace rubbed the back of her neck. “Me too.”

It came slow enough to see, slow enough that maybe I could have reacted, though I didn’t understand that it was real until it happened. Ace leaned down, touched my face, and kissed my cheek—soft, gentle, pressing in for a second before pulling away. 

“Get some sleep,” she said. “You’ve had a long few days.”

Now I was truly speechless. I stared at her, stars in my eyes, touching my fingers to the place she kissed me. She was looking out at the horizon. But I knew she wasn’t really looking. That was her tell—not necessarily for when she was lying, but when she was avoiding something. Something like the hesitation, the reluctance as she pulled back from me. 

But she was right. I had had a long few days, and despite my heart racing from the little kiss, I was too tired to pursue it. 

“Goodnight, Ace,” I said quietly. 

I could see the conflict in her eyes. Conflict about... something I could not yet decrypt. She nodded, staying there, staring at the skyline just like she had Monday night, when the rain drummed quietly on the balcony and splashed on her face. 

It was quiet as I climbed into bed.


	29. Chapter 29

The next morning, as I returned to my apartment, I crossed paths with Oona in the kitchen. She was taking her morning coffee and antidepressants, her eyes still swollen from sleep and her hair pulled in a messy knot.

“Long time no see,” she said.

I gave her a quick good morning. But as I shut myself into the bathroom to shower again, I heard her say, “Weird, because we live in the same apartment.”

She was still there after I dressed, and we left together. As I locked the door behind us and shoved my lanyard into my pocket, I saw her eyes catch on my hands—on the scrapes and redness on my knuckles.

“Where have you been, seriously?” she asked.

I shifted my bookbag. “Around,” I said. “Shadowing at the Merciless Mart.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

The elevator came and we stepped on, alone. Most of the other law students were already at breakfast. Oona and I, on the other hand, had started on a very bad habit of arriving ten minutes before it ended, just so that we could snatch a bit more morning dozing. I normally liked our solitary elevator rides, but Oona was looking right at me. She could see every move I made.

“I’m thinking of doing an internship at Academic Integrity.” I knew the place so well by now that this was barely a lie. If I passed initiation, I’d probably work there for lack of fitting anywhere else. “The director lets me into her office on Tuesdays.” Also not a lie.

“And?”

“What?”

“And what else? Tuesdays, yeah, but I haven’t seen you, like, all week. You disappear after dinner and then I don’t see or hear from you until you walk through the front door at some ungodly hour of the morning. Are you even sleeping in your room?”

I inhaled. Here went nothing. Or half of something.

“I’ve been with Ace,” I admitted. “After—Beauregard’s house—it’s been hard to adjust.” Not a lie. “I thought about therapy, but the Amity don’t know what it’s like, almost dying. But Ace knows. She was there.” All true. “She’s been helping me deal with it.” She had. She’d been making it harder, sometimes, but for the most part, being with her helped clear my head.

The suspicion on Oona’s face cleared. “Oh,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

The elevator let us out.

“Well…we miss you. Me and Ravi. And Sherlock. We started a study group to prepare for finals, I just wanted you to be there.”

I smiled gratefully. “That sounds nice. I can go tonight.”

“Well, not tonight,” said Oona. “Ravi has an appointment for hormone replacement therapy, and Sherlock and I—had, um, plans. We were going to study tomorrow.”

“Oh.” _Shit._ “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I was going to meet with Ace tomorrow, and—”

“It’s okay if you can’t,” she insisted, lying right to my face. “Really, it’s okay.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s okay—”

“No. It’s fine. I understand. I’ll meet you in the dining hall, I have to go.”

Clutching her books to her chest, Oona quickened her pace and ducked inside the girls’ bathroom. “Oona—” I began, but she slammed the door behind me. A glance at my watch told me I was about to miss breakfast. 

I shook my head and hurried to the dining hall instead. I’d talk to her later, I promised myself, as soon as I got all of this sorted out.

I really should have known by then that my own promises never held weight.

That night, I fell asleep early, having barely slept in...wow. Weeks, maybe. Ace’s bed was nice, but my bed really was an exquisite thing. I nearly slept through Logical Reasoning on Friday morning, the class I was by far the most lost in. But I couldn’t lean over and ask Oona for help because she was giving me the cold shoulder, and so was Sherlock, both of them glancing over when they thought I wasn’t looking and typing furiously—chatting in a private message I couldn’t hear or see. Ravi had his own issues and I didn’t want to bother him. So I just floundered until class was over. 

Finally, the time came. I went up to the roof fifteen minutes early to wait for Ace, adjusting my bandanna and bouncing from foot to foot.

When she arrived, she was scowling. “Right,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

We left Candor and rode the train in silence. Part of the reason was that we had company, a small group of adult Dauntless chatting amongst themselves. They didn’t seem to care much about us, but when we got closer to the compound, Ace leaned over and whispered to me that I’d have to jump on my own or they’d definitely notice something off. The thought filled my gut with a sensation like writhing snakes, but I nodded anyway. I jumped where I was supposed to. I landed clumsily, ripping my leggings and skinning my knees on the gravel, but ignored the pain and held my chin high. 

Instead of the room with the fighting ring and punching bags, Ace led me through the winding tunnels of Dauntless to a dark, cold hallway. The Dauntless didn’t seem to care much for interior design. Lined up down the halls were uncomfortable metal chairs, and a chalkboard on the wall listed a couple dozen names and numbers. Ace pulled out her impressive keyring and opened the door at the end of the hall. Then she touched my shoulder to guide me into the room, closing the door behind us.

When she turned on the lights, I recoiled, my shoulders hitting her chest.

In the room was a reclining metal chair, similar to the one in my aptitude test. Beside it was a familiar machine and a computer.

“Sit,” said Ace. 

I looked at her, my eyes wide. “What is this?”

“This,” she sighed, “is stage two of Dauntless initiation. You know the phrase ‘face your fears’—well, we take it pretty literally here. In short, this simulation makes you face your greatest fears.”

My greatest fears. I touched a wavering hand to my forehead. I knew simulations weren’t real; they posed no real threat to me, so logically, I shouldn’t have been afraid of them, but my reaction was visceral. Ace must have seen my doubt as I forced myself into the chair and reached across to touch my hand.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

“Your heart is racing,” I told her, my voice thin. I could feel her pulse through her fingers. She pulled back.

“Because we’re not facing your fears today,” said Ace, turning back to the computers. “We’re facing mine, both of us in the simulation together. This is what I was talking about last night.”

Right. The thing that would change my mind about her.

“It’s like the aptitude simulations?” I asked. 

“The serum’s a little different. It targets the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in processing negative emotions—like fear—and gathers the patterns of stimuli that are most likely to trigger a fear response. A transmitter in the serum sends the data to the computer, the algorithms analyze your patterns to see which is the most vulnerable, and then the computer spins up a simulated scene and sends it back to the transmitter. You stay in the scene until you calm down—that is, lower your heart rate and control your breathing. Then you get the next scene.”

“How can two people go in the same simulation?”

“Easily. I’m setting up your transmitter as a clone of mine and turning off input on your end, so the computer will only receive my fears.”

I tried to follow her words, but my thoughts were whirring like frightened insects around a light. The insects scattered entirely when Ace turned around again and I saw two huge, orange-tinted syringes in her hands. My mouth went dry. I considered myself alright with needles; Tori’s tattoo needle and the small clear syringe that held the truth serum were my only experiences. But this wasn’t a needle. This was a dagger.

“An injection?” 

Ace smiled grimly. “Stronger than what they give you for aptitude.”

“Looks...excessive.”

“Needs to be. Fear landscapes are normally ten to fifteen scenes long. You’ll find the truth serum, the real, pure stuff they use in the Full Unveiling, that’s the same kind.”

She put the syringes on the small table between us and began to work on the computer again. I tried not to look at the gleaming points too long.

“I get that I’ll be going under another type of serum,” I said shakily, “but I don’t see what a fear simulation has to do with learning how to lie.”

Ace sat next to me, taking both syringes. In front of us, the computer glowed serenely, quietly humming a pitch between notes. Her thigh just barely touched mine, and when she closed one syringe in my hand, I shivered. 

“It’s because the serums are supposed to read who you really are,” she replied. “And people like you… people like, like me… for whatever reason, they can’t read us. You might not be practicing a lie. But it’s the same principle—constructing a real you that does what it’s supposed to.”

She guided my hand to position the syringe near her neck, tapping her fingernail near a vein. 

“I’ve never done this before,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt her. But I also wasn’t sure what I was getting into.

“Just press the button down. It’s fine.”

I had to hold my hand steady with my other one as I pressed the needle in. Ace didn’t even flinch. Then she took the other syringe and her fingers brushed my neck, making my body tense more. A curl of my hair had escaped from my bandanna and she moved it aside to reach my neck. 

The needle wasn’t pain so much as a little pinch, and when I pried my eyes open, it was out. A deep, dull ache pulsed where it had entered. I could feel my heart pulsing in my throat, especially when Ace sat down next to me and took both of my hands in hers.

“Be brave, Phoebe,” she said. “The first time’s always the hardest.”

“At least I’m not doing it alone,” I said weakly. 

Something like surprise crossed her face. Then she nodded. “Yeah. Least we’re not alone.”

Her eyes were the last thing I saw.

* * *

The simulation took us.

When I opened my eyes again, the room around us was gone. Instead, I found myself staring at the city unfolded around us, glass buildings and the arc of train tracks. We stood on the top floor of a skeletal tower. As we looked around at the oil-slicked floors, glassless windows, and empty walls, I could feel Ace’s pulse speed up in my hand.

“You’re scared of heights?” I asked.

“Not quite,” she said.

A _crash_ made me jump and I whirled around. One of the lanterns fell, bursting into a shower of sparks. Small flames caught on a paint tarp, and then with a _whoosh_ raced across the spilled oil. The fire spread impossibly fast. It cut us off from the only door, the one to the stairwell. We stood on the only patch of dry ground near a window.

Through the searing heat, Ace’s hand clenched mine so tight it hurt.

“Ace— _Ace!”_ I shouted over the roar of the fire. For a second, her eyes were glazed in nothing but fear. I punched her arm. It made me feel bad, but it did the trick. She shook her head. “Ace, it’s not real.”

“Right,” she said, still a little dazed. “It’s not real.” She closed her eyes, inhaled, and turned to me. “Tell me how you would get out of this.”

I looked back at the flames. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly keen on being so close to fire myself. And it really felt real. An ember popped, landing on my bare arm, and I gasped in pain as it singed my skin. I whirled around to the window.

“We can jump,” I said. “In the aptitude test, there was one where I was killed by a bomb. I didn’t actually _die,_ it just took me to the next scene.”

“Wrong.”

“What?”

“That’s what a Divergent would do. Only Divergents understand that the scene’s not real. Think differently—what would you do in the scene if you didn’t have that level of free will?”

If I didn’t have free will? If I was ruled by my fear instincts, like the simulation was supposed to make me. If I thought I might actually die. I looked over the edge of the windowsill again. The outside of the building was flat and mirrored, impossible to climb down. Coughing on the thickening smoke, I turned back to the burning room. I shielded my eyes with my hand and finally found it. Places where the oil had not spilled and the flames did not burn as high.

“There’s a path to the door,” I yelled. “We have to run through the fire.”

“Good girl,” said Ace, hoisted me up in her arms like I weighed nothing, and charged right into the blaze.

We burst into the stairwell (which was also burning, figured). Ace told me to hold on tight and leapt right over the railing, grabbing a cable. Down, down, down we soared, flames licking our skin, me clutching tight to Ace as her heart pounded against my cheek. When we reached solid ground, we ran, breathless from the thick smoke and heavy hot air, at last, at last, breaking through the doors into fresh air. 

I landed on a patch of lawn on my back, chest heaving. Ace thudded down right next to me. The front of my body was hot from the burning building in front of us, but I was just glad to be out, glad to be alive. Although it wasn’t like that could have killed us.

Wiping my eyes, I sat up. “That wasn’t so bad,” I rasped.

But I had spoken too soon. As soon as my hands pressed against the grass, I felt the pain. I saw the black char. My hands were covered in red blisters and burnt black skin. I reached up to my face and gasped. 

Ace had gotten the worst of it. Her clothes were tattered and smoking; every inch of her skin was flaming red. When she saw I was looking at her, she ducked her head. But I had seen it. Her crescent scar was fresh. A leathery white thing ringed in boils.

“The height’s not the fear,” she panted. “The fire’s not either. It’s the burns.”

Oh.

I wanted to be helpful, say that the scene would end once her pulse slowed, but I felt like an intruder on something deeply personal. Ace was in so much pain right now, more than me. She hunched over, gasping, her face screwed into a silent scream.

“I’m fine,” she told me.

She was lying.

After a minute, she inhaled, lifted her head, and opened her eyes. The new burns on her face were gone. A new dread took their place. And when I next blinked, I saw what she did. I was on my hands and knees, next to her. Darkness around us. A cold concrete floor. Like the floor of an Abnegation home. 

Next to me, Ace gasped and pressed a hand to her chest.

I stood shakily and helped her to her feet. “What’s next?”

“It’s—”

Something solid hit my spine. I crashed into Ace, my head hitting her collarbone, and then we both went down, jostled on every side. Walls appeared on our left and our right. Somewhere, a door slammed, and when I looked down I saw only a horizontal sliver of yellow light. The crack at the bottom of a door. Ace was hunched over, pulling her arms close to her chest to fit. The room was just big enough to accommodate both of us, and no bigger.

“Confinement,” I whispered.

She made a guttural noise. In the dim light, I could barely see her face, and the air was close; we shared breaths. She was grimacing as if the fire was still burning her. 

“Hey,” I said, “it’s okay, here—”

I guided her arms around my body so she had more space. I expected her to accept it begrudgingly—not to clutch at my back and bury her head in my shoulder. She was warm, unyielding. My cheeks grew warm. Certainly, she could tell that I was still built like a child.

“This is the first time I’m happy I’m so small.” I laughed. If I joked, maybe I could calm her down. And distract myself.

“Mmhmm,” she replied weakly.

“There’s a door. Maybe we can break out,” I said. “It’s easier to face the fear head on, right?”

She shook her head. It was a tight, tense little gesture, and I felt her earrings against my cheek. “Can’t break anything. Door’s unlocked. Just a knob.”

“But?”

“Can’t move.”

“It’s not that small, we have room to stand up.”

“Can’t,” she echoed.

I went quiet. Could fear really be so strong as to fully paralyze a person? Apparently so. My mind flicked to other possibilities—breaking the door anyway, among them—but those didn’t seem to be within the normal parameters of the simulation. What _were_ the normal parameters? Curious, I turned, curling into a ball and pressing my back into her chest. A row of wood planks _screeched,_ and the wall pushed up against my chest. The room was smaller. One of Ace’s knees was bent next to my head and the other curled beneath me so I was sitting on her ankle. We were a jumble of limbs. Harsh breath inhaled next to my ear.

“ _Ah,_ ” Ace rasped. “This is worse. This is definitely…”

“Shh,” I said. “Arms around me.”

Obediently, she slipped both arms around my waist. I smiled at the wall. I was not enjoying this. I was not, not even a little bit, no.

“The simulation measures your fear response,” I said softly. I was just repeating what she told me, but reminding her might help. “So...if you can calm your heartbeat down, it will move on to the next one. The correct response is to embrace the fear.”

“Yeah?” Her lips moved against my ear as she spoke, and heat coursed through me. “That easy for you, huh?”

“Most bisexuals don’t mind being trapped in small rooms with attractive women,” I pointed out.

“Not claustrophobic ones, Phoebe!”

“Wait—you’re—”

“Yes, I’m queer. I have an undercut, I play baseball, I own eight leather jackets, don’t act surprised.”

“Baseball? And you own _how_ many?!”

“This is not a conversation for now!”

“Okay, okay.” I set my hand on top of hers and guided it to my chest, right over my heart. “Feel my heartbeat. Can you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it steady?”

“No. It’s really fast.”

Ah. “I don’t think that has to do with the room,” I said frankly. “Well...focus on my breathing. Every time I do it, you do it too.”

“Okay.”

I inhaled deeply, counting the seconds, and her chest rose against my back. A few seconds. I held the breath. I closed my eyes as I let it out. We did it a couple times, and then I said, “Why don’t you tell me where this fear comes from? Maybe talking about it will help us.”

It was what my mother told me to do when I got anxious about something like school, or Caleb, or my father finding out about something I had done. It sounded right. 

“Um...okay.” She breathed with me again. “This one is from my fantastic childhood. Childhood punishments. The tiny closet upstairs, under the bottom shelf.”

I pressed my lips together. The home that was less preferable than the streets. I had been punished before—sent to my room without dinner, revoked of this or that, firm scoldings. Never shut in a closet. I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to keep it casual.

“My mother kept our winter coats in our closet.”

“I don’t…” she gasped, “I don’t really want to talk anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I can talk. If that’s easier. Ask me something.”

“Okay.” She laughed shakily. “Why is your heart racing?”

I pressed my lips together. “You know. I told you.”

“You’re in love with me.”

“‘In love with’ is a very strong phrase.”

“You said it.”

“I said I think I love you. That’s not the same thing.”

“You already said it, why are you still afraid?”

I was quiet for a while. I searched for an excuse that didn’t involve her arms around me when I had put them there. How could I explain the fear that she might one day want to do it of her own free will? 

“If we were in your fear landscape,” she said, “would I be in it?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Are you?”

“No,” I said, more confidently now. “You’re the only person I can be honest with.”

There was a _crack._ The walls retreated. And, trembling, Ace shifted, pushing herself to her feet and taking my hand to help me up. I shivered, my back cold from the sudden absence of her.

“Shall we, for turn of phrase, come out of the closet?” she asked sheepishly.

The joke was so stupid that I burst into a laugh. “Yes, I think we should.”

She pushed the door open. I half-hoped that it might lead to the building where this closet was in her memories, that it might give me another glimpse of what it was like to grow up a factionless orphan. That was a fascination I always felt guilty about, but it was hard to shake off.

Except it wasn’t a building, it was a void, a white non-space that should have blinded my eyes if it was real. It felt like how television static looked. A few yards away, facing us, there was someone that made my blood freeze cold.

Lady Rose.

Dressed all in white. Her greasy blond hair fell around her face and her eyes were blank, blind, as she pointed a gun at us. When I looked back at Ace, an identical gun appeared in one hand, a single bullet in the other. Lady Rose just stared. Why wasn’t she shooting us?

It struck me like the knife across my chest. The fear had nothing to do with Ace’s life. It had everything to do with Lady Rose’s.

“You have to kill her,” I said softly. 

“Every time.”

“Even before you…?”

“Before it was her, it was someone without a face. Or someone I loved. Nowadays, it’s always her.”

I inhaled. I had to force out the next words. “She’s already gone.”

“She looks alive.” Ace bit her lip. “She didn’t have to die.”

“She would have killed me,” I said. The words didn’t feel like mine.

She nodded quickly. “I know. Just...turn around. You don’t have to watch.”

“If you have to do it, I should watch.”

“It’s not...not so bad. Not as much panic involved.”

Not as much panic, but far more regret. It was rooted deep in her eyes as she turned away, as she held the gun and opened the chamber like she’d done it a thousand times—and maybe she had. She clicked the bullet into the chamber and raised the gun, and I turned around.

The _bang_ did not echo. The white, wall-less room absorbed it. But I still heard it again and again and again in my head. I smelled the mothballs and the sickly breath and the stab of iron from fresh blood. I felt, beneath my feet, the crumpling of her body to the floor. Then, right after, the thump of Ace’s gun. What she said was true—it did feel real. 

She put her hand on my shoulder. I had not realized I was covering my ears.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You?”

“No,” she agreed. “We have to keep moving.”

As we turned to leave, the blurry form of Lady Rose disappeared. Except in my memory and Ace’s. From her familiarity with it, Ace must have gone through this process dozens, maybe hundreds of times. What would it be like to kill someone every time I went inside my own head? I could no longer blame Ace for being so cold. I couldn’t imagine how she was still sane.

But something in particular puzzled me: these were supposed to be Ace’s worst fears. And though she panicked in the building and the box, she killed the image of Lady Rose without my help. Why was it a fear? Fear of causing harm to others? She said it had been there before and hadn’t changed much. Surely having to kill someone in cold blood in real life would have changed the scenario, other than just putting Lady Rose there. It almost seemed like the simulation was grasping at any fears it could find within her, and hadn’t found much.

Ace squeezed my hand as we reached an unseen wall, and she slid her free hand across it until finding something at eye level.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered.

She slid her hand horizontally and something _clicked._ I blinked. The thing was the lock of a window—a window that looked out at a very familiar landscape. Grey houses. Pebble walkways. Rows of identical mailboxes.

“Abnegation?” I asked, turning to Ace. 

But she wasn’t listening to me. She turned from the closed window and stared across the kitchen, fists by her sides. She was trembling again, worse than ever. Her eyes fixated on the handle of the front door, and when it turned, her feet shifted wider. A fighting stance. Ace stifled a sob.

The man who emerged was tall and slim, with hair cut close to his scalp. He held his hands behind his back; his feet in an identical stance to Ace’s. And he wore the grey clothes of Abnegation.

“Marcus,” I whispered.

“Abigail,” said Marcus.

My eyes widened. I looked at Ace, only to recoil. Ace was gone. In her place was an Abnegation girl of about twelve, tall and stocky for her age, but diminutive in the shadow of the person she’d left behind. Her strong form was replaced with a hunched, soft one. Her black hair was long and pulled into a bun. Her face was pale, round, free of scars. But not free of the fear.

Everything came together.

Ace was Abigail Eaton—the cold case, the missing girl, the tragedy of Abnegation. 

Marcus dropped his hands to his sides. A belt curled around one of his fists, a snake. Slowly, his face blank of emotion, he unwound it from his fingers.

“This is for your own good,” he said. 

Ace—Abigail—stepped back. She bumped into the countertop. Strewn across the surface were spices and cooking tools, ingredients and pots. A knife and a cutting board. On the stove, a pan of oil crackled and popped. The answer was so easy; grab the knife, pick up the pan, throw the dishes. Abigail didn’t seem to see any of them. She just stared at Marcus, tears glimmering. As if she didn’t know he wasn’t real.

“Ace,” I said, grabbing her hand. Her smaller, softer hand. She didn’t react. “ _Abigail!”_ That got her attention. She whirled to me, her dark eyes wide. “Look at me. It’s not real. This isn’t happening.”

For a long time, she didn’t respond. It didn’t even seem like she was breathing. Her pulse still raced where our hands met, but Abigail didn’t even blink.

“You’re wrong,” she said quietly. “It already did.”

Marcus pressed forward. Abigail jerked to the side, our hands breaking. First Marcus kicked her. She cried out, a young animal’s cry, clutching at the edge of the counter. Hanging there, her back to Marcus. Trembling. Not running, not fighting, just waiting. Marcus yanked his arm back and the belt sailed over his shoulder.

I charged in front of him. The belt cracked against my face, and my vision exploded with white, hot pain. I grit my teeth and forced my eyes open again. Marcus was just drawing back, so I lunged forward and grabbed the belt, twisting my wrist to wrap my grip around it. Then I pulled as hard as I could. Marcus stumbled and let go.

“Abigail!” I gasped. 

For a moment, fear seized me. I wanted Ace, but she was gone. It was just the scared little girl in the corner, looking at me as if I was the one who was supposed to lead her, not the other way around. Then Abigail shook her head. The moment passed. In her young eyes burned a fury so bright that now, I was almost afraid of her. 

Marcus lunged at me with a roar. But Abigail was faster. She grabbed the belt from my hands and pushed me behind her, putting herself between me and Marcus. And then she drew back her arm.

The moment the leather struck his cheek, everything vanished.

I sat bolt upright. We were back in the Dauntless simulation room, Ace leaning heavily against me. It was her again. My Ace. She was trembling, her eyes wide, almost vulnerable in the dim lights. Any other time, I might have made some sort of remark about how awkward it was, two of us sitting in a chair made for one, but now it didn’t seem the time. I let her lean on me and touched her shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said softly. “We got through it.”

Swallowing, she nodded quickly. Then she pulled me into a tight hug.

“You got me through it,” she said finally.

“Well.” My throat was dry. Nerves like electricity pulsed through me every second she touched me. “It’s easy to be brave when they’re not my fears.” Most of them. 

I let my hands drop and casually wiped them on my leggings, hoping she didn’t notice. If she did, she didn’t say so. Slowly, she laced her fingers with mine.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she said.

“Yeah.” I laughed breathily. “I think so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry ace i love you but you're also a great punching bag


	30. Chapter 30

Hand in hand, we walked toward the Pit. I couldn’t help but monitor the pressure of my hand. One minute, I felt like I wasn’t gripping hard enough, and the next, I was squeezing too hard. That was the problem about living in a faction where everyone could read each other like a book—you became obsessed with how people perceived you. I never used to understand why people would hold hands as they walked, but then Ace rubbed her thumb against my knuckles, and I shivered and understood completely.

“So…” I latched on to the last logical thought I remembered. “Four fears.”

“Four fears then; four fears now,” she said, nodding.

“You said everyone has ten to fifteen.”

“Most people.”

“I take it you were some kind of record?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Some people around here still call me Four. But it doesn’t stick the same as Ace.”

 _Four._ A shiver passed down my spine. I had begun reading the Erudite papers for more than just investigation and become fascinated with their writings about the multiverse—the theory that there were millions, billions of alternate universes lying parallel to ours. They contained people who lived like us, acted like us, talked like us, but through the pulling of the straws of fate, were just a little bit...different. In the blink of an eye, I swore I caught a glimpse of one. Two Dauntless named Tris and Four, walking along the edge of the Pit, hands intertwined. Then the image was gone. 

I didn’t mind. I let Tris and Four have their moment, undisturbed. This was a moment for Phoebe and Ace.

She led to a narrow path behind the chasm railing, leading to a rock outcropping near the water. I had never noticed it before—it blended right in with the rock wall. But Ace seemed to know it well. 

I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I had to know about Abigail Eaton. I had to know...everything.

“You said we were going to talk,” I said.

“We’ve talked.” She scratched the back of her neck with her free hand. She was avoiding it.

“When were you going to tell me that you’re Abigail?”

“Shout it to the whole faction, why don’t you?”

We reached the end of the path and stood at the bottom of the chasm, where the rocks rose and fell at harsh angles from the rushing water. She led me up and down, across small gaps and stepping stones. She found a flat rock near the side, where the current wasn’t strong, and sat down, her feet dangling over the edge. I sat cautiously beside her. It didn’t matter where she came from, she seemed comfortable here, inches above the roaring rapids.

She released my hand. I looked at the jagged edge of the rock.

“What you were saying about... about me being the only person you’re honest with,” she began, “the feeling’s mutual. You’re one of maybe a handful of people who know my whole story.”

“I don’t _feel_ like I know the whole story,” I said. “I’m...I don’t know whether to be angry, or confused, or what. And what do you mean, only a handful?”

“Irene knows. A couple Dauntless leaders. Marcus knows.”

 _Marcus._ I thought of Sajida Touma, the girl who went missing while searching for Abigail Eaton. 

As if she’d read my thoughts, Ace added, “Sajida knows.”

“What happened to—”

“She’s safe. She connected the dots just hours before Visiting Day, gathered proof from Marcus, and left Abnegation on her own. She’s with the factionless for now, staying with Miriam.”

My shoulders relaxed. In the back of my mind, I had been fearing the worst—that I would find out something else had happened to her, and I would have to face Judge Touma one day and tell her that her daughter was gone. 

“So you lied?” I asked quietly. “You’re not really factionless?”

Ace lowered her head, fiddling with her hands in her lap. 

“I didn’t lie,” she said. “I am—I was factionless. By every definition of the word. I ran away from Abnegation when I was thirteen. A lot of people down there, they suspected I had faction blood, but they never asked. Factionless by birth, factionless by choice, it’s all the same down there.”

“But you were missing. Everyone was looking for you. It was huge, it was one of the biggest news stories for years—”

“They were looking for Abigail,” said Ace, her eyes hardening. “Abigail doesn’t have a scar like this.”

I was quiet. The question lingered on my lips, unsaid. Ace sighed mightily. From this side, the scar was all I could see, that cruel crescent.

“I ran away the same night that Marcus gave it to me. We had a fight. We were in the kitchen; it was a pan of boiling oil. I don’t think he understood what it would do.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “If anything, it saved me. It put him in a compromising situation. He tried to console me, told me to say it was just an accident, and we’d never talk about it again. But he knew it wouldn’t be enough. When I ran away, it got worse for him. He couldn’t tell people why I’d really left. He couldn’t give an accurate description of me with the scar—if he claimed to know about it, even when saying it was just an accident, that’s sketchy. He couldn’t pretend I _wasn’t_ gone. So he told the Candor and the Dauntless, ‘Look for a sweet little girl who wants to come home to her daddy’. He knew they’d never find her.”

I was quiet as I thought about it. I had only been eleven at the time, but I remembered the cloud of mourning that covered the city weeks after Abigail’s disappearance. The nighttime sigils every year, holding little candles as we sat in the church pews and listened to Marcus pray. Asking God for his little girl to come home again. All of it—a lie.

“Marcus created a cold case,” I said.

“The sympathy was good for his public image,” Ace shrugged. “But it was good for me, too. I could disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Changed my hair, mainly. Changed my name to Alzolay, after some old baseball player. Said I was a prostitute’s orphan. I got a job at a restaurant and paid for my own living, and when I got closer to sixteen, I started going to the project schools, studying.”

“You said you passed the literacy exams because you got lucky.”

“I did. I also told you I slept on the streets. One winter, I lived in the boiler room under the school—it’s warm, you do what you have to. I was right under one of the teachers’ offices. One night, I hear a few of them talking, and they’re laughing about something, and as I listened, they admitted everything. How the exams are rigged. Closer to spring, they even started creating the rigged problems on a chalkboard. I could see it all from a vent. So I practiced them, mugged an Erudite and stole his textbooks, taught myself advanced calculus, and I passed. That’s when Irene got involved.”

I didn’t question the fact that Ace just admitted to robbing an Erudite. The mental image was actually kind of funny. I resolved to ask her more about that scene of the story later and let her continue.

“Irene put me under truth serum and got the whole story out of me. She was going to tell her superiors who I was, but I begged her, god, no, don’t make me go back there. So she didn’t. She pulled some strings, let me take the aptitude test, and I got Dauntless.” 

“Just Dauntless,” I said slowly.

Her mouth pressed into a smirk. The roar of the river ensured that we wouldn’t be overheard, and she seemed to understand this. “What are you asking, Phoebe?”

“So there _were_ others?”

“I never said that.” She chuckled. “No. It was just Dauntless. But Irene still seemed wary. For my Choosing Ceremony, she found some obscure corollary that says that a sixteen-year-old can choose anonymously, and those who know her are bound by law not to reveal her identity. I chose Dauntless right in front of my father and he was forced to say nothing.”

She sounded proud of that part, and for good reason. It must have been awful for Marcus watch. Still, I had heard of those people who chose anonymously; they weren’t very common, but when they happened they weren’t held in high regards. It was worse than transferring factions. It was saying in front of the whole city, “Not only do I reject the place I came from, I have never held loyalty to them; I have never been a part of them.” They were seen as loyal only to themselves. Very few anonymous initiates became members. 

“That must have been hard,” I said.

“Initiation was a bitch, yeah,” she agreed. “Everyone wanted to know where I came from. A few Candor transfers almost figured it out, actually; they realized Abigail would have been my age, that my father and I were about the same height, all that. So I dropped the bomb myself. I said I was factionless, an orphan who named herself after a baseball player. Told them I was a whore’s kid. It was so outlandish it couldn’t be a story; nobody would ruin their reputation like that if it wasn’t true; and any suspicions about Abigail disappeared. I became Ace.”

It was a beautifully crafted lie, really. Layers of secrets, layers of stories. One throwing off the scent from the other. I remembered what Lars had said about Candor confining the secret of Ace being factionless. That would have really deflected suspicion and confirmed in people’s minds that they knew all of Ace’s deepest secrets, so why press her for anything else? It was an Irene move if I had ever seen one.

I watched Ace as she breathed; it _looked_ like a load had been pulled off her shoulders. Her face was less tense. That was what she had meant about her fears changing the way I saw her. But...they really didn’t. Maybe sometimes, when I blinked hard, I could imagine the little Abigail Eaton in her place. But the girl was far from the person she was now, the product of five years of reshaping and rebuilding. Shaving and inking and piercing and hardening, honing, polishing. 

“Is Ace—” I hesitated “—who you want to be?”

She picked at her nails. She pulled a small knife from her sleeve, but put it away.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Sometimes she’s who I _wanted_ to be, when I was on the streets. Free. Powerful.” Her lip trembled. “Untouchable.”

“But you... _are._ You’re incredible.”

“I thought Ace was going to give me a home. I thought maybe—” her voice cracked, trembling “—I can have what everyone else has, being able to remake myself, really _become_ Dauntless. Forget all of the other stuff. But I can’t. I’m still factionless. I’m still Abnegation. I can’t—I can’t bear to remember Abigail, I can’t bear to forget Alzolay, and I can’t find a version of Ace that exists without either of them.”

She turned her head aside and sniffed. She was crying. I did not know what to say.

So I didn’t speak. I reached over and hugged her, and just like before, she returned it. Tight and strong and warm. But vulnerable. Quiet. She was torn and I knew what it felt like. To be fractured like that while the whole world was pulling apart around you—it was hard. It hurt.

She pulled back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “M’okay,” she murmured. The other hand had intertwined with mine. 

“Maybe you were cut out for Candor, because you’re a terrible liar,” I said.

A dry smile. “Fine. I’m an emotional wreck and I don’t know what to do with it all, so I’m dumping it on you in some twisted sort of therapy session. I also struggle with the paralyzing fear that I’m burdening my loved ones with my problems, so I’m feeling a good deal of guilt right now, too.”

“Relatable, honestly.” I shrugged. “Are you okay with me calling you Ace? I can change to Abigail when we’re alone…”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t know how to feel about Abigail anymore. I haven’t heard it in a long time.”

The only one who would have said it was Marcus, in the simulation. It couldn’t bring back a good taste.

“I think Ace suits you,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a playing card pun?”

“You’ll never know.”

(It hadn’t been. But now that she mentioned it, it absolutely was.)

Our eyes settled on a thing between us, our hands, interlocked.

“I don’t think Ace has to go away,” I said. “Maybe she just needs to change. Instead of leaving behind the old versions of you…maybe it’s time to accept them.”

“Three faces can’t fit on one person.”

“Well, that’s just quitter talk.” I shrugged. “I was told it’s only possible to have aptitude for one faction. And somehow, this tiny body fit all five.”

“And how are you managing _that_?”

“My brain is very fast and very loud, all the time, and sometimes I want to die.”

“Proves my point.”

We laughed.

“But it’s not a bad thing,” I said. “It’s hard. It’s messy. But sometimes I think, maybe it’s just a part of being human. Being messy. We’re only a few millennia away from animals. Sometimes the standards of _clean_ are just…too inflexible for almost-animals.”

Ace paused as she turned that over in her head. “When did you get so wise?”

I met her eyes. Her response was adjacent to sarcasm, but within was a genuine question, too. I thought back to an image of a girl in grey. When we were kids. Glancing at her in passing, trying to meet her elusive dark eyes. Maybe I had loved her then. I would never be able to act on it. It would have been just an indulgent fantasy, like watching the flocks of crows fly from the train every morning. Perhaps I had fixated on Ace, of all the Dauntless, because something small in the back of my mind still longed for her.

I thought of the past week, every beautiful minute where she and I would train, the spaces in between where we talked about life and living and all the things that came with. I thought of the stretches of thoughtful peace as we rode the speeding train while the sun came up, or as she sat on the balcony and watched the storms of the night sky. I thought of her fire, her intensity, her courage; but also her softness, her empathy, her selflessness. She was broken and messy and patchwork and _beautiful._

“When I started watching you,” I said. 

I really had to give it to Sherlock. If he hadn’t kissed me first, maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage to reach across the space and touch Ace’s cheek. Or to tilt my head up, lean forward, and press my lips against hers.

There was no trying and no thinking. Just us. Her taking my face in her hands, her fingers strong and trembling just slightly. Returning the kiss, tentative, but wanting. Our noses squishing and chins touching, her scar rough on my skin.

For a while we stayed, deep in the chasm, the roar and cold spray of water around us. And when we rose, hand in hand, I realized if we had both chosen differently, we might have ended up doing the same thing, in a more secret place, in grey clothes instead of black ones.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beginning act 3! thank you guys for reading so far, please let me know what you think in the comments!
> 
> (also: yes i WANT to give ace and phoebe a fluff chapter but hhhhhhh plot important i suppose. that's the downside to actually writing this thing in Book Format instead of Self Indulgent Nonsense Format, as is my normal modus operandi)

The next morning I was silly and light. Every time I pushed the smile from my face, it fought its way back. Eventually, as I rode the train back to Candor with Ace, I stopped suppressing it. We were both tired, so we were quiet, but I lay my head against her shoulder and it was all I needed to say. When we parted ways on the roof, she wiped a soot smudge off my cheek. 

“Your buttons are messed up,” she said, pointing to the Candor shirt I’d thrown on over my Dauntless tank top. 

I darted up to kiss her again. “So’s your hair,” I said.

“What’s wrong with my—”

I stuck my hand in it and ruffled it up. Then I skipped away, laughing.

“You’re infuriating, you know that?” Ace called.

It was Saturday. No classes. I went back to my room and resolved to sleep, since I had been too excited last night to do much of anything but tease Ace while she tried to get rest (instead of sleeping on the floor, like she had before, I invited her to share the bed with me. I got clingy fast, what could I say?). But still, I was too excited to sleep. I pulled out my journal and started drawing, humming a song called “Roundabout” under my breath.

At a little before noon I went looking for Oona, wanting to go out to lunch with her and talk—maybe I could give her an abridged version of why I was gone and she would forgive me. But she was nowhere in the apartment. On my way out, I crossed paths with Aletheia, who was waiting at the elevator. I looked at her gingerly and cleared my throat. 

“What?” she muttered, not even returning the look.

“Have you seen Oona?” I asked.

“No.” She paused to pick her fingernails. “Because I don’t care.”

Well. Not helpful. Not that I had expected Aletheia to be, but still. I wasn’t sure what our relationship was anymore. I wasn’t mad at her like before. Something had changed about her, something...hidden; a lot of people felt like that to me nowadays. The things Aletheia said—and by extension, what many other Candor said—might have been true. Blunt, hard, brutal honesty. It was the things they didn’t say that were tricky.

I awkwardly followed Aletheia to the cafeteria, not wanting to go to Antigone’s alone. It wasn’t like I could go with Ace, though the thought was appealing. Antigone’s wasn’t the kind of place for a Dauntless. And after all, Ace was on the clock; she had a job to do.

To my surprise, Oona was in the cafeteria. So were all of the other initiates. Most of them had textbooks or laptops with them, eating as they read or typed, talking quietly amongst themselves. Oona was surrounded, talking with Sherlock on her right, Jed on her left, so I got my sandwich and salad from the lunch buffet and settled down across the table, next to Ravi. 

“Uh, hey guys,” I said.

Sherlock and Jed said hi, but Oona just gave me a look before turning back to Sherlock.

“I think Oona’s mad,” I said in a low voice. 

Ravi pulled out a headphone. “What gave it away? The glaring?” 

“I bailed on you guys for studying. I tried to tell her that I didn’t want to, but...I haven’t spoken to her for days.”

“She’s just stressed, ‘sall.” He shrugged. “Worried about the exams.”

“She almost passed the midterm, why is she worried?”

Ravi made a weird “mrmmrm” noise that I took to mean “I don’t know.”

“How are you, by the way?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, I should be okay,” he said. “I filed for accommodations on the logic and procedure exams, because, like, the dyslexia.”

“That’s good!”

“Administration was kind of a bitch about it, and Judge Touma hasn’t gotten back to my emails all weekend, but at least I got the documentation in.”

“Hasn’t gotten back to you?” I echoed. Touma was religious about responding to emails. Once, I sent a question about an assignment at one in the morning. She responded within the minute. 

“Worst case scenario, they don’t give me the time extensions, I fail, and maybe I can appeal.”

“Well—I hope you don’t fail—but what do you mean, Touma hasn’t gotten back to you?”

Ravi frowned, as if he didn’t understand why I was suspicious. I hoped he wouldn’t get too curious. Sajida’s disappearance, Judge Touma’s asking me to find her, Ace getting in contact with Sajida—it was a lot to explain. Judge Touma going radio silent, too? I didn’t know if I could handle that.

Before Ravi could say anything, the grandfather clock at the front of the cafeteria chimed. All of the initiates, as one, got up and started gathering their things.

“Maybe she’s doing what normal people do on a weekend,” Ravi said. “Ignoring school.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He frowned. “Where do you think?”

I hadn’t even finished my lunch. I shoved a huge bite of sandwich into my mouth and tagged along with the group of initiates, trailing at the back with Ravi.

“Uh, you guys don’t typically all get up to go somewhere at the same time, is this a new thing, or…?”

“Oh, Morris made an announcement yesterday. I think you were zoned out.”

Yes, I had been zoning out a lot lately. Mostly thinking about Ace.

“It’s an info session about the Full Unveiling, or something,” said Ravi. “That cool blind lady with the sunglasses, she’s filling us in.”

_Irene._

I tried to play it smooth. “Oh, awesome,” I said. “I love her sunglasses.”

_Wow, Phoebe, real smooth._

We filed into one of the lecture halls, where Irene was waiting at the podium. I wondered if she had some way of knowing when I walked in the room, because as I passed her, she frowned. But she said nothing to me, just leaned over to her assistant and said something in a low voice. 

When we were all seated and quiet, she cleared her throat. 

“Thank you all for being here,” said Irene. “I am sure none of you enjoy coming to class on your day off, because I don’t either. Let’s make this quick. In two weeks, you will all be taking the four-part Candor initiation exam, consisting of tests in Logical Reasoning, Legal Procedure, Investigative Technique, and Argumentative Technique. In order to receive your scores and accept your place as a member of Candor, you must consent to a ritual known as the _Full Unveiling.”_

The room had been quiet before. Now, it was like Irene was speaking to only herself. I wasn’t even sure if I could breathe.

“The Unveiling will take place in the Grand Courtroom of the Merciless Mart, from eight o’clock on Saturday morning to…however long it might take. It will proceed as such: Your witnesses will be every adult member of Candor, as well as your fellow initiates. You shall stand before the faction naked, except for the ritual uniform, a waist covering—don’t laugh, you’re not children. You shall accept a dose of 46% concentrated veritarbital, also known as truth serum, for those of you who haven’t paid attention in Legal Procedure.”

There were a few nervous chuckles at that. I was not one of them. I had kind of paid attention in Legal Procedure. I knew that the standard concentration of veritarbital used in legal proceedings was 38%. The closer you got to 50%, the closer you inched towards actual brain damage. 46% was _strong._ I hoped Irene had plans for me, because spending a few minutes in Ace’s fear landscape didn’t sound like enough preparation anymore.

“Once under the serum, you have two options. The first is the traditional line of questioning. Our faction leader, Mr. Jack Kang, will ask you a series of questions related to the eight vices, and you shall respond to each question in turn.

“As you should know, Candor tradition holds that there are not merely seven capital vices, but eight—lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, wrath, pride, and deceit. Such vices can be defined as any thought, word, or action which disrespects ourselves, our peers, or our society. For the purpose of the Full Unveiling, we shall define the vices as any area of our life where we may harbor secrets. Some secrets might vacillate upon more than one category of vice. That is fine; the questioning is rarely neat and orderly. Our only hope is that by the time we have covered each category, you will have nothing more to tell.”

My shoulders relaxed minutely. None of those, except the last one, sounded like they might ask about my aptitude test. Maybe that was how Irene planned on helping me lie.

“But don’t get cocky,” Judge Morris cut in. “The dose is high enough that if you have a secret that somehow lies outside any of the vices, you’ll tell it anyway. There’s no fighting it.”

Well.

I waited for Irene to correct him, but she just nodded gravely. “There are indeed many secrets of things that are not morally wrong, and sometimes a vice can be done in such a way not to be wrong. Your professor is right. You will not have a choice as to which secrets get spilled. They will all come out eventually. Sometimes they are things that you don’t even know about yourself.”

In the front row, Dauntless transfer Altagracia raised a hand. Irene kept talking until her assistant tapped her on the shoulder, then she frowned.

“Does someone have a question?” she asked.

Altagracia stood up and cleared her throat. “Yeah, sorry,” she said. “What do you mean, things you don’t even know about yourself?”

Irene gave a grim smile. “The sort of thing that would be better to forget. When I was three years old, I fell off my bunk bed and hit my head. The trauma caused internal bleeding that led into a gradual loss of vision over the next week—eventually ending in double retinal detachment. But I didn’t know that. I also didn’t know that when I went to church the next morning, I got lost on the bus and left with the wrong family. I spent three days living with an Amity family and their thirteen children before someone realized I didn’t belong. I forgot all about it until the truth serum dug it back up again.”

“It can do that?” asked Altagracia.

“The mind is a vast, winding place,” said Irene. “Which brings us to our second option for the Full Unveiling. If you believe you know yourself well enough to answer these questions without the help of truth serum, you may write your own testimony of secrets and read it aloud.”

A low murmur spread across the room. My shoulders relaxed a second time. 

“Keep in mind—if you attempt to read something that is not true, things will become very painful for you. If you choose not to put something in, it will come out after you are done. This option is equally as revealing as traditional questioning, but some initiates find it preferable, as you have more control of when secrets come out.”

That had to be how Irene planned to help me. We would just write a script and I’d resist the pain when I tried to read a lie…

 _“However,”_ said Irene. 

(I groaned internally, already knowing that she was about to hit me with something that slaughtered my hopes again. Candor really liked to give the good news first and the devastating news next.)

“If you choose to prepare your testimony in advance, you are required to send the manuscript to the Department of Academic Integrity. A panel of five judges will compare your testimony to your Full Unveiling. Whenever the two accounts differ, the judges will determine whether or not you were attempting to lie. If too many attempts are made, the judges may vote to fail you out of initiation.”

“How many is too many?” asked Sherlock. 

Irene shrugged. “That’s up to the judges.”

Along with most of the class, Sherlock seemed aghast before saying, “That sucks.”

“Yes, it does,” agreed Irene. “Oh, cheer up, I can literally smell the fear from all of you. Think of it this way—as many secrets as you have, there’s someone in this room with more.”

She paused. And in that strange way, like the hairs standing on the back of your neck, I knew who she was talking about.

“It could be worse, after all,” said Irene. “You could be on trial.”


	32. Chapter 32

That night I planned to talk to Oona, but she wasn’t in her room. I stopped by Ravi’s room to see if she might be there, but none of the boys had seen her. Except for Sherlock, probably, because he was also missing.

“They’re totally screwing,” said Brighton. He was sitting on the kitchen countertop, eating a sandwich and nude except for his boxers. Unlike me, he was completely shameless.

Ravi nodded. He was sipping a soda and a little more clothed, wearing at least his binder. “Sherlock’s brushing his teeth after every meal,” he observed. “Like, I know the dude wears a retainer, but that’s obsessive.”

“You only do that for real reasons,” Brighton agreed.

I couldn’t help that my cheeks were hot. “But they never said that they’re—you know?”

“They don’t need to,” Ravi said. “It’s obvious.”

“But—they’re not here. Where’s—um—where are they getting a bed?”

Brighton raised his hand. “There’s really cheap rooms in the basement of the Acropolis Club, if you know who to ask, and you don’t care about not having windows or air conditioning. Me an’ Katie used to do it all the time, back a few months ago when she got curious about foo—”

“Ooooooookay, that’s enough,” said Ravi loudly.

“Just being honest,” Brighton shrugged.

“There’s honesty and there’s oversharing.”

I quietly excused myself after that. I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Sherlock and Oona were romantically involved—I didn’t mind the news itself, but I thought that Oona might be the one to give it to me. How long had it been going on? If they were already at the level of...well... _intercourse,_ then it had to be serious. I was beginning to feel a certain way that I did not like. Chilly. Uncomfortable. Jealous? Lonely? I couldn’t be either. I had Ace.

That night, after she clocked out, I took my dinner up to the roof to eat with her. I was going to talk about Oona, but when I opened the door and stepped outside, I did a double take.

Ace was standing there with two of the last people I expected to see. The first was Miriam, wearing pants. I had only ever seen her in her drab brown maid dress. Now she wore a battered aviator’s jacket and ripped jeans, and she leaned on a heavy metal cane. When she turned, her frown was so unlike the Miriam that I had grown to know that I almost didn’t recognize her.

The second person was a girl my age. She was dressed all in black and grey, a mix of Candor, Dauntless, and Abnegation fashion, her head and face covered in a silky black scarf. She flinched back when she saw me until Ace held out a hand, reassuring her. 

“Close the door, Phoebe,” said Ace.

I locked it for good measure. This seemed like one of those things that needed a little more subterfuge.

Hearing my name, the girl stepped forward. I met her eyes above the scarf. Now I knew. Slowly, she lowered the scarf and exposed her brown face, the face that I had always thought of as so, so beautiful in the drapes of her scarf—more so than mine.

“Sajida,” I said.

Sajida smiled wanly. “Hey,” she said. “So, this is weird.”

I couldn’t help myself—I laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

“I like your hair.”

“Thank you. I like that...you kept your scarf.”

“Eh, maybe I left the factions; at least I don’t have to leave the faith.”

She shrugged. Up close, I realized we were the same height, which was small. 

“You know,” she said, “there’s some joke to be made about us basically switching places, you to Candor, me to Abnegation, and both of us becoming some kind of hot-head revolutionary.”

I winced. “I wouldn’t say I’m a revolutionary—”

“But she is a hot-head,” said Ace.

Yeah, fair. 

“Okay,” Ace continued, clapping her hands, “you two can gossip about hairstyles and anarchy later, alright? Sajida, say what you gotta say, we need to leave.”

“Leave where?” I asked. I was ignored.

“Right.” Sajida nodded. 

She reached into her pocket, pulled out an envelope, and gave it to me carefully, folding my hands over it as if afraid of it blowing away in the evening wind.

“Give this to my mother tomorrow,” she said. “But after class, please. She’s very emotional and might not be able to teach if she sees it before class.”

“I will.”

“Also, I tried to write it in classical Arabic in case someone else gets their hands on it, so it might take her a while to read. My Arabic letters are really terrible.”

I cracked a smile at that. “You know, she gave me hell about my handwriting once, I thought she was going to kick me out of the faction.”

Sajida rolled her eyes. “That’s Mom for you. Just...tell her I’m safe. Tell her to stay where she is. And—”

She hesitated, then looked at Ace. A silent question. Ace nodded. A silent answer. Slowly, Sajida inhaled. 

“I couldn’t even write this down, because if anyone finds the letter, it’ll be taken to him,” said Sajida quietly. “Tell her—don’t trust Lysander Morris.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

“It’s not for you to worry about. It’s just for her.”

“Saying ‘it’s not for you to worry about’ is a great way to get me worrying,” I said worriedly, with a worried expression, while worrying my hands. 

“Sajida,” said Miriam, speaking up for the first time.

“Right. Sorry,” said Sajida quickly.

She put her hand on my shoulder, a strong grip. She looked at me like the Candor-born did—knowing, understanding, an eye trained to analyze. I wonder if she saw that I was scared. Not scared of any one thing in particular, definitely heightened by the ominous warning about Judge Morris. But I realized for the first time that I was nervous all the time. A cold undercurrent, pulling at my ankles, threatening to drag me under. And I realized it only because I could see it in Sajida too.

“Everything is about to change, Phoebe,” she said. “Be careful who you trust. And good luck.”

She turned and strode away, a loose end of her scarf flapping in the wind. When she climbed up onto the roof ledge, she helped Miriam up, and Ace followed.

“Where are you going?” I called over the wind.

“If I told you, you’d have to come with,” replied Sajida. Then she jumped.

I looked to Miriam and Ace, but Miriam only gave me a cold look. Briefly, I wondered how she would follow Sajida across the rooftops, but then she slid her cane into a sheath on her back and jumped as easily as Sajida had. When she landed and stood again, I saw that one of her legs was remarkably shorter than the other. That explained the limp. Apparently, she was still very strong.

 “Sajida’s a drama queen, but she’s a good kid,” said Ace. “And—sorry for skipping out on dinner.”

I felt dazed. Dizzy. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Thanks.”

She hesitated. Then, impulsively, she jumped back down from the ledge, came to me, and kissed me. “I’ll make it up to you. Anything you want.”

“Anything,” I repeated.

“Don’t make me regret it,” said Ace with a grin. Then she left.

I sat on the rooftop for a long time, the wind around me changing, again and again and again.

* * *

 

The next morning was Sunday. Legal Procedure. I woke up at my alarm, inhaled, and started to plan what I would tell Judge Touma. 

What I didn’t know was that I would never tell her anything. 

When I walked into class ten minutes early, no one was at the podium. Which was strange. Most of the seats were full, since attendance shot up after the midterms, but there was no Judge Touma. If it was another class, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But Touma was an early bird. If class started at 9, she would be in the lecture hall at 8:40 to set up and answer questions. Oftentimes, she’d just chat with the people in the front row until the clock struck 9.

But the front row people—namely, Oona, Sherlock, Brighton, and most of the Erudite transfers—were quiet and waiting. I ducked into my back-row seat, where Ravi was flipping through a giant stack of notecards.

“Where’s Judge Touma?” I whispered, the room too quiet for comfort. 

“Told you,” Ravi murmured. “She’s impossible nowadays.”

I gave him a look. “Her daughter failed initiation, you know,” I scolded. I knew I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that, but Ravi’s flippancy was a little annoying. “She’s going through a lot.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going through a lot, and I’m going to fail initiation too because of her. This place isn’t big on sympathy.”

The door opened and someone strode in. We all turned. But instead of Judge Touma’s flowing black abaya and fluffy white cravat, our eyes were met by a very different sight. A slim black suit and colorless hair. A pressed frown. 

“Good morning,” said Judge Morris, striding up to the podium. “Madullah Touma is no longer teaching at the Institute. I will be taking her place for the remainder of initiation. Please open your textbooks to the discussion questions of Chapter 5, Introduction to Civil Procedure, Section 4—”

“Wait! Wait, what?!” a dozen voices shouted at once. The entire front row stood up. 

“Touma’s _gone?”_ Oona demanded. “Why? What do you mean?”

Morris turned to her, unfazed by the shouting. “I mean,” he said, “that she has chosen to leave. I am not authorized to tell you why.”

“Not authorized?”

“Please sit down, Miss Posner.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Oona. “Not authorized—that’s a lie, that’s not telling the truth at all.”

“Yeah,” Brighton agreed. “Why can’t you tell us?”

“Because Madullah Touma broke the law,” said Morris calmly. “Now. As I said, I am not authorized to tell you anything more. Please open your textbooks and complete discussion question 1.”

The room went quiet. My stomach was sour. But it wasn’t because our questions had been answered. If there was anything we had learned in Candor so far, it was that honesty took precedence over everything—except an ongoing legal dispute. Judge Touma had taught us that. She was the last person any of us had expected to break the law, so by-the-book with everything, so clear and straightforward, it would make anyone sick to hear an accusation like that. But if she really broke the law, then we would need to wait for the authorities presiding over the case to release the information before we we heard even a whisper more. No amount of harassing Morris would hasten this. 

For a faction that valued openness, they sure knew how to screw a tight lid.

Swallowing, I pressed my lips together. All around me, people were typing the answers to the discussion question, albeit hesitantly. At least half of them were probably typing messages to each other, wondering the same things that I was. But eventually, everyone’s discussion questions were finished and answers sent in, popping up on the front board for the whole class to see. An acceptance. This was how things were here. People disappeared. Doors were closed. Cases tucked away. Nobody asked why, because there was no reason to distrust anyone. If there was a secret, there must’ve been a good reason.

Not for me. It wasn’t good enough for me.

After class, I didn’t even get lunch. I passed Judge Touma’s office on my way out—door locked, windows covered. I left the Institute and ran across the street to the Merciless Mart. The front security was surprised to see me, but they were getting to know my red hair well and let me right in without questions. I thought myself lucky at the time. 

Now I wish they’d stopped me. If they had, I might’ve noticed what was off about the crowds today—more blue than usual. Erudite. They were everywhere. And I barely saw.

When I reached the Department of Academic Integrity, it was quiet. The secretary was there, but something wasn’t right. When he looked up, his eyes were like a deer in headlights.

“Irene’s not here,” he said quickly. “Come back later.”

“I have to speak to her,” I said.

“I said she’s not here,” the secretary repeated.

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is she?”

“I—don’t know.”

“You’re lying.” I knew it immediately. The little dart of the eyes. The jerk of his hands. It was becoming like knowing when to breathe. “Tell me where she is.”

I’d never thought of myself as an intimidating person. I resembled what a child’s beloved teddy bear might look like in the body of a teenage girl, soft and brown and maybe a little raggedy. Ace was the intimidating one. But something on my face—maybe the Dauntless rubbing off on me—must have scared the secretary, because he actually _winced._

“She’s in the distillery,” he gasped. “Where they have the truth serum. Basement. But—but you don’t have access, you’re not allowed in there—”

“Sounds like someone else’s problem,” I said tersely, and left.

The elevators were too slow. I took the stairs down. Sajida’s letter was hidden inside my computer bag, in the hidden pocket with my journal and lockpicks, but my gut instinct told me it wasn’t safe there. I took it out, slipped it under my shirt and tucked it into my belt, its corner pressing into my back. I also took out the lockpicks to deal with the door. I was getting better—I’d long since figured out the new roof lock, and sometimes if I couldn’t sleep I would slip into the Institute and practice unlocking different lecture halls. Ace will claim that once, on one of her sporadic night shifts, she mistook me for an intruder and wrestled me to the ground before realizing it was just me. I don’t know what she’s talking about. It probably didn’t happen. And if it did, there were only two witnesses, me and her, so it’s my word against hers. 

The door was soon open, and I strode right through. 

When the secretary had described the distillery as _in the basement,_ I had not envisioned the thing that I saw. My eyes were dazzled by flood lamps and I had exited onto a metal walkway, overlooking a vast white storeroom that seemed big enough to swallow the Merciless Mart above it. 

I knew, generally, how veritarbital was produced. It was a blend of complex chemical compounds designed to interact with the memory and emotion centers of the human brain. These compounds were produced raw, then carefully ratioed and mixed with solvent. The problem was that this process could not simply be done once. Veritarbital needed to be “broken in”—mixed with small samples of serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, and other chemicals found in the brain until the more powerful chemical reactions had already occurred. The original solute would be taken out and remixed with more solvent. Repeat, repeat, repeat. After a few rounds it would be safe to use without destroying the recipient’s brain on the spot. 

This was where it happened, in a grand white room with huge glass tanks bubbling with silvery-clear solution. Candor chemists in pristine white coats—most of them had been Erudite transfers, back in the day—walked slowly through the aisles of tanks, taking note of temperature and pressure readings. Huge, deafeningly loud fans on every wall kept the airflow circulating. 

But what shocked me most was the blue. 

A small group of Erudite stood just below my feet. They surrounded a large computer screen and a few Candor whose faces I couldn’t see, but I recognized the neat black hair and white suit of Irene. She seemed to be arguing emphatically with a blond Erudite woman and another Candor. They hadn’t heard me come in, but over the noise of the fans, I couldn’t hear them either.

Gripping my computer bag, I stepped away from the railing. There was a small stairwell and I moved close to the wall as I walked down it. When I reached the bottom, I could hear the voices more clearly, but I couldn’t leave the stairwell without being seen. I stayed close to the wall, crouching down behind a metal I-beam. Irene was shouting.

“...The answer is no! What about this is not absolutely clear? You’ll wait your turn like everyone else, or you get out of my faction and leave me the hell alone!”

“There’s no need for profanity,” someone replied. A female voice; cold and familiar, but familiar like a dream, not a real person. “It’s a simple question.”

“It’s not a simple question,” Irene retorted. “All you said was that you wanted to collect data on veritarbital production, you froth at the mouth about how well I run this place, and now you’re asking to cut in line. Your flattery is _vile,_ and I won’t stand for it—”

“We both know that you’re not angry about the flattery,” said the woman.

“I am _very_ angry about the flattery! I’m angry about your blatant disdain for due process of law! I’m angry about your accusations that I haven’t done my job correctly—”

“But you haven’t,” said a man’s voice.

My blood froze. I knew that voice. _Judge Morris._

“Pardon?” Irene spat.

“What happened with Madullah was very much your fault, Irene,” said Morris. “Your department has full jurisdiction over the conduct of Institute professors, the Touma family has shown repeated signs of deviant behavior, and you somehow never saw this coming. Any reasonable person would allow for this intervention. In fact, if you had made a genuine mistake, as you claimed in your testimony, you would be grateful that the investigation is being taken out of your hands.”

 _“I beg your pardon?”_ Irene repeated, her pitch rising.

“Jeanine is making a very gracious offer. Is there something wrong with it?”

Jeanine.

The leader of Erudite. My father’s greatest enemy. Though Morris said it while clearly defending her, in my mind, the very name was supercharged with vitriol. I knew by now that I didn’t completely agree with the way my parents had taught me to think about different factions’ leaders. But I still didn’t know what to think about Jeanine. I thought of all the journalists who seemed to change their minds overnight, the men like Thomas Beauregard whose public images were polished to a shine. Something still wasn’t right about Jeanine.

The whole distillery was quiet. But I could almost hear the rage seething from Irene in that moment.

“Well?” said Morris. “Is there a reason you can’t answer?”

“Are you accusing me of lying?” Her voice was now dangerously low. 

“I’m only asking a question.”

“I refuse to answer without senior counsel present.”

“She wants a lawyer?” Jeanine put in dryly. “Oh—isn’t that a tell? She’s backed into a corner, isn’t she?”

“We’re taking this upstairs,” Irene snapped. “You have overstayed your welcome, Jeanine. And Lysander, you and Jack will be having quite the talk.”

Her shoes and cane rapped against the floor. I backed up. It was time for me to get out of here. I turned to go, but I was rushing; I wasn’t careful. The strap of my computer bag snagged on a wall switch, and I stumbled, gasping. My shoulder hit the metal steps with a loud _CLANG._

The arguing voices went quiet. I froze. 

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” I said, a second before two Erudite men appeared at the bottom of the stairwell.


	33. Chapter 33

One man walked so close behind me that I could feel his breath on the back of my head. The other was in front of me, separating me from Jeanine, Morris, and Irene as they led me to the elevator. Irene hadn’t said a word since I slipped on the stairs. She knew it was me before Morris called me by name. Morris and Jeanine had asked her what I was doing here, but they got only silence. I took this as a cue. I didn’t say anything either. 

They took us up to the Academic Integrity Department, and as we got off the elevator, Irene’s hand clumsily wrapped around mine. Hastily, she began walking to her office with me in tow, as if if she powerwalked fast enough then they wouldn’t catch us. It didn’t work. Morris grabbed the shoulder that had hit the stairs and pulled me back. 

I was already on edge, but the rough grab didn’t help. Morris’ fingers dug into the bruise. I panicked and jerked away, hitting his wrist. “Let go!”

“You’re not going with her,” Morris said. “You have some explaining to do.”

“I invoke my right to legal counsel,” I stammered. It was the first thing that came to mind. But it was the wrong response. I looked up at Morris and Jeanine, staring at me like a bug under a microscope. Jeanine’s gaze was a grey so cold that they hurt. 

“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t need it,” said Jeanine.

Her two lackeys came up behind me, cutting me off from Irene. I caught one more glimpse of her face before one man pushed my shoulder to get me moving. In the struggle, Irene’s glasses had slipped down her face. Her unfocused eyes stared, empty, at the wall.

And something cold pressed into the palm of my hand. I swallowed.

Right. 

I could do this.

Morris stayed with Irene, which I was actually grateful for. He was a talented investigator and I wouldn’t survive being questioned by him. Jeanine, however, was not a Candor. I warned myself not to let my guard down too much, because I could still slip up in a way that you didn’t need to be Candor to see. But my anxiety was also going through the roof, so I was also careful not to scare myself more. It was a thin line to walk. 

Jeanine and her lackeys took me into a place I knew well, one of the testing rooms for the Arguments exam, the little white room with the one-way mirror. The two lackeys went behind the mirror and Jeanine sat at one end of the metal table. 

“Sit,” Jeanine said. Her voice sounded even more familiar when she was irritated.

“I’d rather not.”

“Sit,” she said again. 

I had definitely heard her voice before. Not just speaking to Morris and Irene. Sometime—forever ago, it felt like—

“It was your voice in the simulation,” I said. “The aptitude test, I mean.”

 _She_ was the danger that Irene and my mother warned me about, the danger of being Divergent. Sitting right in front of me.

“Oh...yes. Just one of my humble contributions to science.” She looked pleased that I had noticed, and even more pleased that she got to talk about it. Humble, indeed. “Speaking of which, Beatrice…excuse me...Phoebe.”

It was a small slip up, but intentional. It told me enough. She looked at me and saw Abnegation, not Candor. Automatically, I sat a little straighter and tilted my chin.

“You were the student with abnormal test results,” she said. “There was some sort of...problem with your test. It was never recorded, and your results had to be reported manually. By Irene. Did you know that?”

I looked her in the eye.

“Yes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Chicago Code Title XII, Chapter 2 forbids initiate members from revealing their aptitude test results to anyone during initiation,” I said flatly. 

“And why might you have that memorized?”

Because I was Divergent. Because I’d rather be called a stickler about the rules than have one of my Candor peers pressure me into telling a lie that one of them might see through. Because I knew that Jeanine had been given one testimony from Irene, and the addition of my testimony would just double the chances that they’d find a hole somewhere.

“Because you know which result I got,” I replied, “and I would rather forget.”

Her mouth pinched for a second. “Abnegation. Yes, we know.”

Like a match striking, a bright little flame awoke inside me. I was learning it well. I had a foothold.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Do you know what it’s like? Transferring into a place like Candor from a place like Abnegation?”

“I can’t imagine it’s easy.”

“No. It’s not. I already get hell from my peers because of where I came from. Who I’m related to. Telling them that my brain ticks on an Abnegation clock, that’s not a good way to make friends.”

“That’s a good point, Phoebe,” said Jeanine, leaning forward. “You’re a bright thing, I don’t see why a challenge like that would come as a surprise to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I find this whole thing peculiar, that’s all. An Abnegation, leaving her home of her own free will. Transferring to a faction she had no aptitude for, knowing full well that she would be out of place, that it would be extra difficult, that she might fail. Succeeding nonetheless—even solving a case that the _pros_ couldn’t solve. Seeking out her test proctor for an internship. Being found trespassing the day that the proctor’s character is called into question...it almost seems like you’re following her. Or...following the same kind of trouble.”

Divergence. Factions splitting. The factionless tragedies. Sajida and Judge Touma. Ace.

I inhaled. I inclined my chin.

“And what of it?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“What if I did?” I leaned forward too, folding my arms. I didn’t break her gaze. “What if I just—ignored my aptitude test? Picked something different out of my own free will? Is that not allowed?”

“It’s allowed,” said Jeanine. “But it’s not beyond questioning.”

“Question this, then. Why anyone would leave Abnegation. I’ve read your papers—you’ve got a few theories about it. I’ve got something better. Ask me about what it’s like, knowing that my whole faction has warped the meaning of selflessness. Ask me about what it’s like, getting only glimpses at the mirror, and when I look, all I see is ‘future wife, future mother, future servant’. Ask me about suddenly, on the day I’m supposed to find myself, meeting someone who’s such a polar opposite to the women I’m told to look up to.”

My hands began shaking. I didn’t want them to. This was just an act, I told myself. Did I really mean it? I saw Irene’s face in my mind’s eye—she was striking. But a second later, I realized it wasn’t Irene I saw. It was Mom. The last time I saw Mom had been on the roof of the Institute, her eyes flashing Dauntless. Reflecting Candor, right back at me. 

I shook my head. Tears were beading under my lashes. 

“If you met someone like that, you’d follow her too,” I said. “To hell with what’s _easy.”_

I stretched out my hand and opened my fist. One of Irene’s headphone buds clattered on the table. 

“And that was why I was following her today.” 

For a second, Jeanine just stared at it.

“It’s an earbud,” I said. “Irene uses it to navigate her computers. I accidentally took it last week, it got folded in with some paperwork. I know Erudite’s not big on disabled rights, but I think you can figure out why I’d be so desperate to give it back.”

She picked it up, holding it to the light as she turned it slowly. Of course, I was terrified that she had seen when Irene grabbed my hand and pressed the earbud into my palm, but I didn’t show it. Just glared.

Finally Jeanine set the earbud down and met my glare again. “Alright,” she said, in the kind of voice that said it was not actually all right. “I was only curious. I know you Candor like to think that Academic Integrity has full jurisdiction over the aptitude tests, but this version _is_ my rightful creation. Any errors must be investigated, so future students aren’t at risk of…worse errors.”

The lie was so loud it hurt my head. She didn’t care about the technology—she suspected that something is awry with my test results. She was on a hunt for Divergents. Was that why she was after Irene? What did Judge Touma have to do with all of it? 

“As for your trespassing into the distillery… I’ll let the Candor handle your discipline.”

“I don’t know if it’s trespassing,” I said, my voice level. “Obviously, I don’t have a key. But the door was practically open when I got there.”

Jeanine hesitated. I could see the gears in her head turning as she tried to remember if the door had locked behind them. Her eyes, to my relief, never once traveled up to my hair, where some oddly-shaped hairpins had their home. I gave an innocent smile.

“May I see that bag?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” I said.

I slung my computer bag off my shoulder and placed it on the table between us. When she unzipped it, a whole stack of papers spilled out, case files and briefs from my classes. She fumbled with those for a second, pushing them aside, before pulling out my laptop computer.

“All of my browsing history is on public record and can be accessed through the Candor law library computers,” I said.

“Nothing to hide, hm?”

I didn’t respond.

Jeanine’s fingernail caught on a flap on the inside corner of the bag—the hidden pocket. Pinching it in two fingers, she pulled out my little leather journal. “What’s this, then?”

“Why don’t we find out?” I asked, unflinching.

When Jeanine looked at me, her left eyelid twitched. Slowly, she unwrapped the leather cord and opened the front cover.

Folded papers, Candor newspapers and Erudite journals alike, slipped out. The first article was one I knew well—an Erudite report on the Beauregard investigation. My face was on the cover. _Candor Initiate Saves Erudite Philanthropist From Deadly Factionless Murderer,_ read the headline. 

“That’s the first picture anyone’s ever taken of me, besides the one on my ID,” I said.

“You sound proud,” said Jeanine.

“I am,” I replied. “But the picture is awful.”

I actually got a chuckle from her over that. “Yes, pictures tend to be like that. Pride, though...I would think that’s a difficult emotion to feel.”

I thought about that for a while. Jeanine’s assumption was that if I truly had gotten an Abnegation result—which I had—then I wouldn’t feel pride. But that wasn’t right. Despite my Erudite result, I still felt stupid. Despite my Candor result, I still lied. Despite my Amity result, I was still angry, and despite my Dauntless result, I was still afraid.

“I think it’s a human emotion to feel,” I finally said. “But that’s what makes the faction system so nice, isn’t it? You’re not supposed to pretend your flaws don’t exist, or ease yourself into thinking that you’re without flaws. You’re supposed to acknowledge they’re there and choose to be better than them.”

Jeanine tilted her head, her look calculating. I added, “When the Abnegation say they naturally don’t feel pride, they’re lying.”

It seemed like the right answer. The tilt turned to a satisfied little nod.

She began rifling through some of the other articles. Most of them were more recent publications, all of them about the factionless.

“You like to read about the factionless,” she commented.

“One of them tried to kill me, so I like to stay updated.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jeanine set aside the articles and turned to the first page of the journal. I watched her face carefully. The eyebrows went back down. They furrowed. Jeanine’s gaze flicked up to me and then back at the pages. She flipped a while before seeming to give up.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That’s my handwriting.”

“It’s...backwards.” She frowned, as if she doubted even that. I knew she wouldn’t be able to read it. The letters were so far removed from their origins that they all just kind of looked like loops. “Is this some kind of code?”

“No, just shorthand. Not a shorthand that someone else could read, of course, just the kind of shorthand that’s fastest to me. I’ve boiled the whole alphabet down into seven different symbols.”

“Why write like this?”

“It’s my Full Unveiling journal,” I told her. “I started keeping it after the Beauregard case. I wrote all my deepest and darkest secrets in that.” Not a lie. “The sort of stuff that you’d rather not tell people. Well, they don’t really look on those fondly here, so I decided, might as well start by being honest with myself. It’s my first draft, you know, because you can choose to do the Full Unveiling as a prepared speech. But I don’t want the secrets to come out yet until I’ve figured out how to say them right.”

“And what kind of secrets are those?”

Now I smiled. It was a genuine smile. It filled my whole face and my chest, and I reached slowly across the table to take the book.

“I can read some of it to you, if you want,” I said.

Jeanine was looking slightly uncomfortable. But she nodded gingerly and gestured for me to continue. My smile couldn’t grow bigger, but if it could, it would have. I cleared my throat. 

“ _‘Tuesday_ ,’” I read. “ _‘I am positive now. I know I am in love with her. If I had any doubt before, I know now that I chose the right faction; if I had stayed with my parents in Abnegation, or followed my brother to Erudite, I would be told that these feelings are selfish or unnatural. But, oh, this feels so good, it feels so right. Whenever I see her, I look at her lips and her hands, and I wonder what they would feel like discovering every inch of my body. Today Ravi told me about a lesbian thing that I think I like the idea of very much, ‘scissoring’, where one woman—’ ”_

“Stop! Please. You’ve made your point.” Jeanine’s face was bright, florid red. 

I nodded solemnly. “It crossed my mind to transfer to Erudite with my brother. But, as it does, love wins.”

“I—suppose Candor and Erudite will never see eye-to-eye on some matters,” said Jeanine haltingly.

“Likely, no.”

She took a minute to compose herself again, unable to meet my eyes. Then she inhaled. 

“I have one more question.”

“I might have an answer.”

“Can I take this to mean…” Jeanine pursed her lips and paused for a few seconds before finishing, “...that if Erudite were to stand against Abnegation’s factionless crisis, you would join the Candor who supported us?”

Abnegation’s factionless crisis? The crisis that Erudite was equally responsible for covering up? The crisis that led to missing Erudite journalists and Candor judges? And stand in what way? It curled my stomach into a knot. Knowing that this woman knew so much more than me, that she saw the tangle of this city from the bird’s eye view while I was still stuck on the ground. And that her response to it were a smug grin and accusations against Irene, one of the few people I felt like I could trust anymore. 

I smiled.

“Wholeheartedly,” I said.

* * *

 

Judge Morris walked me back to the Institute. It was the most uncomfortable walk of my life.

After speaking to me, Jeanine took me back to the lobby and pulled him out of Irene’s office for a private chat, during which there were a lot of side glances to me. He didn’t seem too happy with what she had to say, but I wasn’t concerned with his happiness, only that Jeanine believed me. I also tried not to look too concerned with the lights on in Irene’s office. Three figures stood inside; I couldn’t make them out. I wondered what kind of interrogation Irene was suffering. I wondered how much of it had to do with me.

Finally, Jeanine seemed to make Morris agree to something, and he begrudgingly led me into the elevator. We were silent as we left. I hoped it would stay that way. But when we stepped out the front doors, Morris said, “I don’t trust you, Miss Prior.”

I swallowed.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Less than two weeks, and I won’t have anything to hide.”

I glanced up at him. He was tall. He didn’t look back down, but his frown grew tighter. “Jeanine likes you.”

“Huh.”

“She couldn’t find any evidence against you. And Irene seems to have adopted you.”

“Can’t help that I’m a charmer.”

“You can’t help that you’re a liar,” he said, his tone harsher. At his sides, his fists were clenched. “Jeanine wouldn’t believe me, but I know what you told her—lies. You learned that from someone.”

I said nothing.

“Your so-called ‘internship’ is over. Irene has been told not to make contact with you, and if you so much as look in the direction of the Merciless Mart, I’m opening an investigation in your name.”

Again, I was quiet. We crossed the street and stepped up to the Institute. Judge Morris opened the door for me, waited for me to step inside, closed it, and stood there, as if blocking me from leaving again.

“You’re late for class,” he said.

I didn’t have words. I just turned and ran down the empty halls, only fear to feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup i just finished writing the entire book, prepping it for personal printing rn. so chapters are gonna go up really fast from now on


	34. Chapter 34

**FORMER JUDGE MISSING; CONFESSED COLLABORATION WITH FACTIONLESS CONVICT; ESCAPED EN ROUTE TO ERUDITE COMPOUND.**   
**_A Statement Released by the Department of Media Integrity and Bureau of Investigation, Candor._**

**Former Judge Madullah Touma, 48, has gone missing after confessing to charges of conspiracy, fraud, and trespassing.**

**Touma was a part-time judge for the Juvenile Court and a professor at the Institute of Law and Investigation. She has been disbarred by the Justice Council.**

**Touma was arrested last Friday night. On Friday morning at 9:30 a.m., Touma was reported missing by the students of her family law class. Her husband, Adeel Touma, 49, had not seen her since the previous night and assumed that Touma had simply left early for work the next morning.**

**Security footage in the Merciless Mart revealed that Touma was present in Candor from 7 a.m. until 7:45 a.m. Touma first visited the evidence room of Major Crimes, removing a single set of Erudite clothing, before visiting the Department of Academic Integrity and making a copy of a confidential case file. Witnesses said that Touma seemed “in a hurry” and “hostile to questions”. Touma was not seen after leaving the Merciless Mart.**

**At 6 p.m., Touma was arrested in the office of Jeanine Matthews, head representative of Erudite. Touma had disguised herself as an Erudite secretary and broke into Matthews’ office. Dauntless police brought Touma back to Candor for questioning.**

**Under the influence of 38% veritarbital, Touma confessed to conspiracy with factionless convict Zackary Awl, 19. Awl had appeared in Touma’s court three years earlier for charges of aggravated assault against a Dauntless officer, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Touma reconnected with Awl one week ago, after Touma’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Sajida, allegedly went missing. Sajida Touma had transferred from Candor to Abnegation and prematurely failed initiation. She is presumed to be living with the factionless.**

**Hoping to reconnect with Sajida, Touma asked Awl to look for her. In return, Touma agreed to help Awl gather information about the deaths of the factionless prostitutes known as “Lady Rose” and “the Angel Girls”. Touma was deceived by Awl, who claimed that the Candor and Erudite were hiding facts about their deaths from the public. Neither Touma nor Awl had come into contact with Sajida at the time of Touma’s arrest, and it is unknown if Awl had any connection with Sajida at all. Awl’s whereabouts are unknown.**

**Touma confessed to planning to join a factionless resistance group, hoping that the information about the deceased factionless prostitutes known as “Lady Rose and the Angel Girls” would secure her a spot in such ranks. However, according to Dauntless-Candor intelligence, no such resistance exists.**

**Following Touma’s questioning in Candor on Saturday, Jeanine Matthews requested a separate questioning held by Erudite authorities. Touma’s employer, Irene McCandless, Director of the Academic Integrity Office, denied the request. McCandless claimed that Erudite’s involvement was unnecessary and motivated solely by spite, then filed for arbitration by Chief Executive Director Jack Kang. Attempting to avoid a conflict of interest by all parties, Kang brought an emergency arbitration filing to the Abnegation Council. Chief Councilman Marcus Eaton decided in favor of Erudite.**

**At 9 p.m. on Sunday night, Touma was escorted into a Dauntless military vehicle and driven out of Candor, en route to Erudite. However, while passing through the factionless projects, the vehicle was attacked by a group of eight to ten masked assailants. Most of the assailants were unarmed, though four shots were fired by a sniper in a nearby building. Two Dauntless were injured. No assailants were captured, injured, or identified by name. The assailants freed Touma and fled.**

**Madullah Touma was last seen in a white prison jumpsuit, white hijab, and black shoes. She is not considered armed or dangerous.**

**All assailants of the Dauntless escort were seen in black Dauntless and Candor clothing, as well as dark masks or scarves to hide their faces. The presumed leaders are two women, both between 5’0” and 5’4”, races and ages unknown. According to a witness, one of the leaders walks with a severe limp and carries a cane. The second leader may be “barely a girl, probably as young as sixteen”. All are considered armed and dangerous.**

**Report any suspicious activity to the Dauntless or to the Bureau of Investigation immediately.**

* * *

The report was released the morning after I broke into the distillery.

It made me nauseous. And that was just the Candor papers, the driest, most objective news to ever exist. The Erudite papers, much less reserved, were blowing up. 

The worst part was that I knew exactly what had happened now. Sajida suspected that her mother might be trying to find her, so she gave me the letter to reassure Judge Touma. Two days too late. I didn’t know who had tipped Sajida off that her mother had gone rogue already, but at least that was good timing. The leaders of the mysterious assailants were Miriam and Sajida. They’d gotten Touma out of danger, and now she was with the factionless too.

It had all worked out. But I hated that I wasn’t satisfied.

 _According to Dauntless-Candor intelligence, no such factionless resistance exists._ It was the biggest lie I’d ever seen in a Candor paper. The problem was, I didn’t dare think about what the truth could be. Was there really a resistance? Sajida and Miriam mentioned that there was instability. But a _resistance_? The word sent a chill down my spine.

I didn’t like that Marcus Eaton was involved with this. I was terrified that I knew why—Sajida was poking around in the Abigail Eaton case, believed that Abnegation was corrupt, and was a liability to Marcus. If Marcus could pull Sajida’s mother as far away from a fair justice system as possible, then Sajida would also drift further away. But that also didn’t sound right. Abnegation and Erudite were hereditary enemies; neither faction would take this well. 

That afternoon, when I had lunch with Ace on the roof, I mentioned this. She just grunted and said, “Nothing about that man sounds right”, then changed the subject.

“Final exams are in a week,” she said.

I involuntarily grimaced. I didn’t like to think about those and pretended to be very interested in my pasta lunch. “Oh, I guess. Hey, is that a new jacket?”

“Phoebe, I’m serious,” said Ace, turning to me. The skies were grey, an oncoming storm. Her dark eyes had a silvery tint. “I realized something today. I’ve been enabling you by taking you to Dauntless. I know there’s a lot going on right now and Dauntless helps you in a lot of ways, but you’re a _Candor_ initiate. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yeah, that if I don’t study for the exams, I’ll fail. I know.”

I started rolling my eyes, but then Ace’s hand rested on my shoulder. That got my attention.

 _“Do you?”_ she hissed. 

Irritated, I brushed off her hand. “I _do,_ Ace, you’re not my professor.”

“Don’t have to be. I saw last year’s initiates do this, I have friends who’ve made it through initiation. Your midterm scores aren’t good news.”

“My midterm score was an error. Judge Touma said that if she’d been able to read my essay and grade it right, I might’ve gotten close to passing.”

“Well, close isn’t good enough, and Touma’s not here anymore. Bet my navel piercing that Morris will be grading your essay, and from what you’ve told me, he’s not going to be nice to you. Why aren’t you worried about this?”

“Why _are_ you worried about this?” I deflected the question.

“Because every initiate in the building is stressed out of their shit except you,” said Ace.

“You want me to be stressed?”

“How much do you study a day?”

“Enough,” I lied. The answer was forty minutes, at most. Ten minutes per class, glancing over the notes. That didn’t even happen _every_ day, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt.

Ace snorted. “Yeah. You’re fucked.”

“Language,” I said.

“Have you even prepped for the Full Unveiling?”

“I’m not allowed to talk to Irene.”

“That’s a different problem. Have you decided which kind of questioning you’re taking?”

“The none-of-your-business kind. I’ll figure it out, okay? I’ll bring my books tonight; I can study on the way to Dauntless.”

“We’re not going to Dauntless,” said Ace stoutly.

I whirled to her. “What?!”

“I’ve made the executive decision not to enable your poor study habits. Tonight, I’m leaving through the front doors. You can follow me, but they’ll definitely see you, and you’ll really be in trouble.”

“You’re the worst girlfriend ever,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she said.

The worst part about this was that I knew she was right. I did need to study. I hadn’t turned in a Logic assignment since before midterms. I really was in hot water. That evening, I sat by my window and watched Ace leave through the front doors. At the statue of Themis, she stopped, looked up to my window, and smiled. I flipped her the bird. Only once she disappeared from view did I turn back to my computer and resume writing my Arguments paper about Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

_The second primary criticism states that virtue ethics fails to hold people responsible for their wrongs. According to Aristotle, if people are not born virtuous and must be raised in a virtuous environment in order to develop virtue, the wrongs of a person can be blamed on a flaw in the environment, not on individual decisions. A premeditated wrong and an involuntary wrong are morally equivalent if both wrongs are committed as a result of a poor upbringing. In order to judge wrongs within a system of virtue ethics, a society must ensure that every member has equal access to food, education, shelter, care, and every opportunity to develop into a virtuous person…_

It was a weird time. I felt like I was doing fine on the assignments. But in the classes, I was so lost that I felt guilty about attending. I didn’t raise my hand at questions. If I was called on, I could never find the answer. I stopped reading the chapter before class and instead just took notes the day after, picking up the information while everyone else was reviewing. I almost stopped going to Investigative Technique and Legal Procedure just to avoid Morris. But I knew he would see that as something suspicious, so I kept going, sitting in the far back with my head as far down as I could, wearing more black than white in hopes that I might blend into the shadows when the slide projector was on. It didn’t work.

The stress that everyone else was fighting was beginning to chew on me, too, and the only thing that had kept me sane before were my lessons with Ace. But Monday passed. Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday without a training session. I grew antsy. I couldn’t sleep well, so I wore myself out every night by going up to the roof and punching the air. I still said hello to Ace in the halls, and we ate lunch when we could, and on Wednesday, I pulled her inside my room and we made out for a half hour, which was awesome. But I began to miss the wind of the train, the chatter of the Hub, the thrill of exposing my tattoo.

I couldn’t have imagined a worse way to get them again.

Friday came. There was a storm. There had been really bad ones, on and off throughout the week. It was so bad that it was dark as night by the time Investigations let out at four, the rain coming down in sheets. Which was unfortunate, because I had made plans with Ravi to study at Antigone’s. Instead, here I was, waiting in an ungodly long line to the cappuccino machine in the dining hall. It was just my luck that when I got to the front, the machine ran out of the almond milk option, so I had to wait by the window and watch the rain while the kitchen staff worked to refill it and the non-lactose intolerant people happily went away with regular cappuccinos. It was that kind of day. I wasn’t happy. 

When I rode the elevator up to my apartment floor, I stepped off just as Oona got on. She was dressed very nice, even for Candor standards, in high heels and hair in a perfect coif. I tried to meet her eyes. She avoided mine. We didn’t speak. 

Suddenly nervous, as if she’d yell at me for looking, I hurried past her and down the hall. What was her problem? I’d been home for the whole week. If she wanted to study with me, she could just tell me now. I couldn’t be at fault anymore; I had suffered enough of a cold shoulder already. The burden of apology was on her now. I fumbled with my keys at the door, spilling a couple drops of coffee on my white shirt, and I cursed. The day couldn’t get worse.

That was when I heard the crying.

It was a cry like a wounded animal. Unbridled, inhuman, high and keening. It was muffled behind the door, but unmistakable.

Of all the Candor I knew, I cried the most. I couldn’t help it. I had a lot of emotions. Oona took a neat second place. But she wasn’t home and Katie had dropped out to become factionless. 

Slowly, I opened the door and stepped inside. Other than the crying, the place was silent; all the bedroom doors were open except one. I hesitated, took a deep breath, and knocked.

“Aletheia?” I said softly.

The crying stopped. 

“Go away.” Yes. That was her.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

My mind conjured images of Aletheia twisting her ankle on one of her six-inch high heels, getting trapped under a fallen bookshelf, or burning her neck on her hair straightener. The only reason Aletheia could be crying was because she was in pain, since Aletheia didn’t have emotions. Especially not sadness. I didn’t want to admit that I _heard_ the mourning in her hitched breath. 

“No,” she sniffled. “Go away.”

The handle was unlocked. I pushed the door open slowly. Before me was a sight I never could have imagined—Aletheia was crumpled at the foot of her bed, legs pulled to her chest, her face and blouse wet with tears. The cord of her phone was pulled so tight around her skinny wrist that it looked as if both would snap. When she saw me, her shoulders jerked in another sob. She buried her face in her knees. 

“Don’t look at me. I’ll kill you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t know what to say. I almost wanted to do it, turn my back and let her suffer through whatever this was. 

But it was one of those rare times that I wasn’t such an awful person.

I knelt. I untangled her wrist from the cord and hung the phone back on the wall. I pulled her hair out of her eyes with a clip. I ran a towel under warm water to wipe the snot, tears, and saliva from her face. All the while, she kept crying and cursing at me, but when I got a fleece blanket from her bed and draped it over her shoulders, a greater burst of tears came to stop the obscenities.

I led her to the living room, where she curled up on the couch. Then I put the teakettle on. Candor generally preferred coffee, but tea was cheaper, and it was one of a very few things that all of the factions shared in common. Every morning before we left Dauntless, Ace made me a strong black tea that smelled of a spice she called cinnamon. In Abnegation, whenever one of us got sick, my mother made a kettle of chamomile with a careful ration of honey. Here in Candor, ginger tea was popular. We had a tin because it helped soothe my stomach if I accidentally ate dairy. 

As I poured a single mug, Aletheia whispered, “I lost my best friend.”

My hand froze. A drop of hot water splashed on my skin and I winced, rubbing it on my shirt. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But she chose to leave. She might be happier now.”

“Not her. Not Katie.”

I brought her the mug, but had to hold it for a while as she cried. Finally I sat next to her and helped her drink. She had trouble swallowing and hiccuped the first sip, so I had to get the towel again. She was like a young child. It was almost hard to believe that it was _Aletheia,_ the coldest person I knew.

Finally she managed to breathe. She drank the tea. “It was Albert,” she said. “He was my boyfriend. He—he killed himself last night.”

A pit formed in my gut. That explained the crying. 

“He transferred to Dauntless this year. I—I broke up with him a week before the Choosing Ceremony, I knew he wanted to go to Dauntless, I didn’t want him to stay here just because of me. I told him to do what was best for him. He wanted to go. He told me his aptitude result, he was so happy. But—I got a call from his parents—he wasn’t doing well in initiation—he was going to fail, he was so scared, and—”

Aletheia fought back another sob and retreated deeper into her blanket. “I killed him,” she said softly. “I loved him. I told him to go even though he was scared.”

_And it’s my fault._

My breath caught in my throat. Before I could stop myself, I hugged her, letting her lean against my shoulder. I didn’t say what I meant with the embrace, but I think she knew. Her cheek pressed against the ridge of my scar. There are some things that don’t need to be said between the survivors, the catalysts, the last ones standing.

“Do you remember,” I began, “what you said last week in Arguments?”

She sniffled. “No.”

“It was the Ethics unit. You were asked about act utilitarianism. The theory that actions can only be judged by their outcomes. They’re good if the benefits outweigh the harms, and they’re evil if the harms outweigh the benefits.”

“I said that’s horseshit,” she murmured. “ ‘Cause the moral luck problem.”

“Right. Moral luck. Like if you’re an Amity farmer, and you develop a type of seed that will feed twice as many people, but the fruit of the seed turns out to attract pests, and all the surrounding farms are destroyed. You said the farmer should take some responsibility for the mistake, but we can’t call him evil. He didn’t know. He had good intentions.”

“Yeah.”

I drew back and brushed Aletheia’s hair out of her eyes. Up close, I could see where her tears had smudged up what looked at first like paint—the thinnest layer of makeup. Underneath, her pale skin was red and splotchy. I wondered if she wore makeup all the time. It was the worst betrayal of Candor values, literally putting on a second face for people to admire. But I couldn’t even be mad at her.

“You didn’t kill anyone,” I told her. “That’s horseshit.”

A small laugh bubbled from her throat and she ducked her head. “I guess.”

“No. I _know_.”

I hugged her again. When we pulled apart, she reached for the tissues.

“I—wish I could have seen him again,” she said. “I don’t know if you know this, but—when someone has to die in Candor, we try to mourn before they—before they pass. Or we all go to their side to be with them, to watch the death. For closure. To come to terms with—the truth of them leaving us. When—when someone—when they pass away without warning, somewhere you can’t even say goodbye, it doesn’t feel real. It’s—awful.”

I nodded. I didn’t understand the full depth of what she meant. But the hurt in her voice told me all I needed to know. 

Then I thought of something. It wasn’t really a good something. But it couldn’t be bad. 

“Is he having a funeral?” I asked. 

She nodded. “In Dauntless. Tonight. Outsiders aren’t allowed, not even family.”

I bit my lip. Here went nothing. 

“You remember when I told you that I went to Dauntless?”

“You were joking—”

“No. I wasn’t.” I unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt, revealing my rose tattoo. “I really went, and this tattoo is real. I’ve been back three times and I’ve never gotten caught.”

“What? How? Why?”

“That’s all a very, very long story,” I said, “but in short, I’m kind of crazy. If you’re willing to also be a little crazy...I think I can help you get closure.”

Aletheia looked at me, fear in her eyes. She knew what I meant. Then she nodded. 

* * *

Ace did not like it at all, but it wasn’t like I was expecting differently.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she grumbled. “You can’t be serious.”

“You skipped out on dinner. You said you’d do anything to make it up,” I said. But it wasn’t in the mischievous way that I normally said these sorts of things to her. I was very, very serious, and she could tell. “Please.”

Her gaze darted. I hadn’t brought Aletheia to the Dauntless office, but Ace was still as wary as if she was here. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“The only reason I took you to Dauntless is because I know you can lie,” she hissed. “Do you understand that bringing an initiate to another faction is a crime? If I take her there and she blabs about it, I _will_ be arrested. End of story.”

She wasn’t just bluffing. She was scared, I could see it in her eyes. I looked at my shoes.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I understand.”

“Wait,” said Ace.

I turned back to her. Her good cheek was red, and her hands had gone into her pockets.

“I can’t take you, but I still owe you,” she said hesitantly. “You’ve been to Dauntless three times now. You know the way. If you’re confident enough to do it on your own—and if that Albright girl trusts you—I’ll switch some of the cameras off for you. And there’s a late train on Fridays, so you shouldn’t have to stay the night.”

I straightened up. “Right,” I nodded.

“You know when we usually leave for the train. Take the Albright girl up ten minutes early, so she can take her time over the buildings. She’s not Dauntless, and she’s not The-Other-D-Word either. I’ll take the next train after that one, I’ll be at the funeral. But don’t let me see you.”

“Because if you did see us, you’d have to tell Morris.”

“Yeah.” Ace took my hand again, then kissed my cheek. “Be safe. Be smart.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I meant it. We locked gazes and did not break them for a while, and a million unsaid things passed between us. It felt like something I could not quite identify. The crossing of a threshold. The beginning of a change without a name. I kissed her lips, and she held my face between her hands, and our foreheads pressed together for a moment before I pulled away.


	35. Chapter 35

The journey was easier than it could have been. The rain could have made Aletheia slip, the train could have been going at its normal speeds, the jump from the train to the Dauntless roof could have gone sour. 

But Aletheia was quiet, determined, and much more athletic than me. I was going to take her into Dauntless via the fire escape, but the rain came in another torrent that would have made it impossible, so we jumped into the net. After I went down, she only hesitated for a moment before following. Then we were inside, two Candor girls inside Dauntless, both of us very wet, one of us very sad, and the other of us very scared.

I knew I would take the fall for this. Aletheia wasn’t Divergent, as far as I could tell; she would tell the full truth in the Full Unveiling and I would be outed as the one who took her to Dauntless. I didn’t know what I could do about it. I didn’t have Irene. I was in Morris’ bad books. I had a huge rose tattoo on my chest, which was now fully exposed by my black tank top. But the future—even the future as close as next week—seemed so uncertain that it was almost unreal. I didn’t know what to feel except vague, paralyzing dread.

Something had bound me to Aletheia and her to me, at some point between the tea and now. We ducked inside a bathroom to dry off. I did her hair in a simple braid, like I had seen on some Dauntless women. She pulled out a little pencil and lined her eyes with dark, flared wings, then did the same for me. My suspicions had been confirmed. Despite her Candor upbringing, Aletheia was no stranger to makeup. She applied it in the morning before anyone woke up and took it off at night after everyone went to bed, and she bought her supplies in secret from an Erudite store. She did the same face every day, a “natural” look. It was a guilty pleasure, a crutch. She said she was going to give up the habit after the Full Unveiling. She was lying. 

Neither of us knew where the funeral was supposed to be, but I suspected the Pit. I knew I was right as soon as we entered. The floors and walkways were packed with Dauntless, more than I had ever seen before; the noise was deafening. The air was rich with the stench of alcohol, and not the refined stuff that the Candor drank; it was beer and whiskey and all those sorts of cruder drinks that Ace mentioned or passed to me to smell. Somewhere below, a group erupted into song, the words distorted by the echoes and laughs and slurs of a hundred voices.

Aletheia clung to my arm as I led her down the path, but nobody noticed us. Everyone was drunk. I didn’t know why that surprised me. 

In Abnegation, a funeral was a somber occasion. Everyone gathered to support the deceased’s family, and no one had idle hands. The body was cremated immediately and placed in an unglazed urn, and on the outside of the urn, the loved ones could write messages. Compliments, prayers, farewells. There was no laughter or shouting or singing. There was no alcohol. We faced our loss with nothing to dull the pain.

In front of the chasm was a raised pyre, upon which lay a shape under black cloth. 

“Albert,” whispered Aletheia. 

She tugged my arm, and suddenly I was following her, wading through the throngs. A woman in front of us lurched to the right, losing her balance, then erupted into giggles as she fell into a man’s arms. I could feel Aletheia’s trembling. She had probably never been among so many Dauntless, especially not like this. I had walked among them for a week and I was still frightened here.

She sped up. We pushed through the thickest part of the crowd, towards the front where a group of other teenagers were gathered. Aletheia didn’t seem to see any of them. As if hypnotized, she stared at the unlit pyre.

“Allie?” said a voice. 

I turned. A girl stood among the other teens, staring at us. She was tall and pretty, with dark brown skin and short hair that might normally be neat, but which was now tangled and unkempt. Even though she was dressed in Dauntless black, there was a way she held herself, a set to her shoulders and tension in her face, that betrayed where she came from.

“Christina,” Aletheia choked.

She rushed forward and the two Candor-born met in a tight hug. No questions. No hesitation.

“I’m sorry,” Christina murmured. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I stepped back, hoping to disappear. I knew it couldn’t be a good thing that Aletheia was recognized, but there was nothing I could do about it now. There were about fifty other initiates. I couldn’t pass myself off as one of them in a class so small, so I stood alone and still. I watched as Aletheia sat down with Christina. After a while, they were joined by a stocky girl with crooked teeth and a muscular boy with shiny hair. Four Candor. They passed around a silver flask.

When one of the Dauntless initiates stood up and walked towards me, I couldn’t help but flinch.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft. Somehow familiar.

“Hey,” I echoed warily.

“Tris, right?” he asked.

I startled again. My Dauntless alias. That was when I knew why this boy was familiar—dark skin, eyes like warm coffee, a faint scattering of freckles.

“Yes,” I said. “And you’re…” I couldn’t remember the name.

“Uriah,” he finished. “Uriah McCandless-Pedrad.”

“Ace told you about me,” I said.

Uriah nodded.

“I guess we’re cousins,” he said. “My mom’s, uh, your mom’s younger sister. Hana.”

“Aunt Hana,” I said, feeling the words. “I never thought I’d have aunts.”

“You have Aunt Irene, don’t you?”

I pressed my lips together. “Oh, she doesn’t like the A-word.”

“Gotcha. Well, my mom’s okay with it, maybe I can take you to meet her.”

“That would be nice.”

“What a time for a family reunion, huh?”

“Yeah. What a time.”

He offered me a drink from his flask. I declined at first. A minute later, I took a large gulp, squeezing my eyes against the burning as it went down my throat.

Around the Pit, a chorus of voices went up. A man was climbing on a box near the funeral pyre, standing tall above the crowds. Eric. His eyes flicked around the crowd, and I prayed that he wouldn’t see Aletheia, but then they rested on me. An arm settled over my shoulders, Uriah’s. Then Eric’s gaze moved on.

“Ladies, enbies, and gentlemen,” he bellowed. The voices subsided into mutters, and every eye in the Pit turned to Eric. He had a dark bottle in his hand and took a long swig. 

“My Dauntless. We are gathered here today to send off one of our own. Last night, in the silence of darkness, our initiate Al Madsen threw himself into the chasm.”

The mutters stopped too. Only the rush of the water in the chasm, like unending distant applause. 

“We do not know why,” said Eric, “and it would be easy to mourn the loss of him tonight. But we did not choose a life of ease when we became Dauntless. And the truth of it is…” He smiled grimly. If I wasn’t already so suspicious of him, I would have thought it was a genuine smile. “The truth is, Al is now exploring an unknown, uncertain place. He leaped into vicious waters to get there. Who among us is brave enough to venture into that abyss, without knowing what lies beyond it? When he died, Al was not yet a true Dauntless, but we shall honor him as one, for he died as one of our _bravest!”_

A cry rose from the center of the crowd. The Dauntless cheered at varying pitches, high and low, bright and deep, tumbling and crashing. Hands thrust bottles into the air, clouds of stinging spray that fell as rain and coated our faces. A dark echo of the waters below.

“We will celebrate him now, and remember him always!” yelled Eric. Someone handed him a torch, and he lowered the flame to the black cloth. As the flame spread, Eric stepped back, raising the burning torch above his head. “To Al, the Lionheart!”

“To the Lionheart!” shouted the crowd. 

Arms lifted all around me, and the Dauntless chanted the name. Lionheart—bestowed upon only the bravest of Dauntless. Again and again, until the word became unreal. It was the primal scream of an ancient race. Hoarse and choking as smoke filled the room. There were vents that would help clear the air, though they weren’t working fast enough. The Dauntless were getting too drunk to care. 

But I cared. I left Aletheia with the Candor transfers. I could not breathe, and it wasn’t because of the smoke.

I didn’t know where I was going. Probably nowhere at all, just away. I found the stairwell to the initiate’s wing and unlocked it with two pins. Just like when I visited with Ace, it was dark, only the corners and intersections bathed in blue light. The training room with the punching bags was also dark, but unlocked, and I stepped in.

As the fluorescent lights slowly clicked on, I found myself standing in front of the chalkboard with names. I knew some of them now. Uriah was first. Christina was fifth. I found Al’s name at the bottom, with some other names under a dotted line. He had been failing. His fate, after the Dauntless final exam, would have made him street patrol or factionless.

My stomach clenched. What kind of place was this, to call suicide brave? I didn’t want to assume anything—I never knew Al. Aletheia had told me some things about him. He was kind, so kind, too kind for Candor. Perhaps too kind for Dauntless. It was twisted, hearing the Dauntless celebrate his death as if their lifestyle had made him braver, glorifying whatever struggle he must have been having, as if by driving someone to suicide they had done something _right._  

I ran to the punching bags. I took all my anger, all my confusion out on the leather. I didn’t bother taping up my hands, so my knuckles turned red and raw, but I didn’t care.

Ace was nicer to me than I deserved. She had never once commented on how I could easily wind myself after ten minutes, which I did. I hadn’t even finished being mad before I was breathless, bracing myself against the wall with a nasty stitch in my side. 

Cursing, I left the gym and limped to the water fountain. Far down the right corridor, a thousand distant voices roared. The festivities were still going strong. Down the left corridor, two voices conversed in hushed tones. Something brushed up against the back of my mind, familiarity. I ignored it. But as soon as the water touched my lips, I snapped straight up again.

I knew both of the voices. The first was Eric, low and sharp. The second— _it couldn’t be._

Looking around, I saw that I was alone, so I left the comfort of the blue light and ducked into the shelter of the shadows. I pressed close to the wall, keeping my steps soft. The voices were just around the corner, out of sight. But I didn’t need to see.

“It’s here in the order form,” said Caleb. “You wrote, look, two hundred single doses.”

I swallowed. Of all the places I had expected to hear my twin brother’s voice, it wasn’t here. It was different—I supposed my own might be different, too, if I was to hear it back at me—more confident. Even irritated. I had never heard Caleb be irritated before.

“ _Two thousand,_ boy,” Eric snapped. “That’s another zero.”

“That’s a pencil smudge,” Caleb replied. 

“The hell would I do with two hundred doses? I’m drugging up a whole damn faction. Jesus, even for an initiate, you’re stupid.”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked Caleb, his voice even tighter now. “Perhaps we can leave the crates here, with you, and you can unpack them. That way, I’m not being _insulted_ for doing my job and my team doesn’t have to do the grunt work that your Dauntless should have been ready to do. Perhaps when we return with the last eighteen hundred doses, you’re ready to treat your guests with respect.”

“ _Respect_ ,” Eric hissed. There was silence. The noise of heavy boots pacing on the ground. “Fine. Leave the crates in the loading bay. But just you wait, I’ll be talking to Jeanine about this.” 

“Good,” said Caleb. “She wants to know why you only ordered two hundred doses.”

Eric’s heavy bootfalls retreated down the hall. When they disappeared, I heard Caleb mutter, “Brute.”

This was my chance. I stepped out from behind the wall. 

“Caleb.”

He was a thin black silhouette looking down at a glowing blue screen. When I spoke, he jumped, almost dropping the thing. “What—who are you?”

Of course he couldn’t see. It was dark as a tomb here. Impatient, I grabbed his wrist and dragged him back down the hall where I came, to the water fountain with the light. He protested, terrified, until the second the light hit my bare, freckled shoulder. Then he froze.

“Beatrice?”

We faced each other, our shoulders squared in the same way, on opposite sides of the ring of light. He stared at me. I stared at him. He was taller. Or at least, it felt like it. His black hair had grown out so it curled around his ears, and he wore a blue jacket and rectangular glasses; he was a person of a kind that I wasn’t supposed to love. But for a second, it didn’t matter. I threw myself at him and hugged him tight.

“You have a tattoo,” he said, his voice muffled.

“You have glasses,” I said. I pulled back and narrowed my eyes. “Your vision is perfect, Caleb, what are you doing?”

“You’re a Candor transfer, what are you doing?” he echoed.

“Crimes.”

“What?”

“That’s my business. Why are you in Dauntless?”

“That’s _my_ business,” Caleb retorted, the edge coming back to his voice. “What do you mean, crimes? How did you even get here?”

“Very long story. I invoke the birthright. Now stop asking questions and start answering them, I’ll start over. What are you doing in Dauntless?”

Caleb opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. The birthright stopped him. As long as we could remember, everyone assumed I was the younger sibling and treated me as such. It made Caleb feel bad and made me feel like the punchline of a cosmic stand-up comedy routine.

This led to us striking a deal—we wouldn’t make a fuss when people assumed the birth order, since making a fuss was selfish. But if we were discussing something between ourselves, I could invoke “the birthright”. The birthright was a completely selfish command. It meant that whatever was happening, I now had the high ground, and any disagreement from Caleb was invalid. I think he only gave me that power because there were few discussions between us that didn’t eventually go back to our parents, who frowned upon the power of the birthright. But our parents weren’t here.

“I don’t have to answer that just because you invoked some childhood deal,” said Caleb.

“Your voice is wobbling. Your lower lip is tight. You’re doubting that,” I told him.

“Look, I don’t know, okay?” Caleb gave in. “I was hired for an internship; it’s supposed to help me pass initiation. I measure doses of Erudite serums and I deliver them around the city.”

“What kind of serums?”

“There’s a lot of kinds. I’m not told what they’re for or what they do, only where they go.”

“Eric said he needs to drug a whole faction. What kind of serum’s for a whole faction?”

It was supposed to be a harder question, but Caleb didn’t even hesitate. “Amity. Their peace serum. Sometimes the Dauntless accompany the delivery trains for safety. It’s probably that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Peace serum isn’t single-dose. It’s baked into the bread.”

“I don’t know,” Caleb snapped. “I just deliver the shipments.”

For a while, I was quiet. He was telling the truth about all of it. Unless he was such a different person now that his tells had changed, too. He took off his glasses and shoved them in his pocket, then ran a hand through his hair, his eyes skipping over mine nervously. Like he was ashamed. Maybe I should’ve been, too. I was tattooed, scraped, and black-clothed. I didn’t even look like the faction that I had chosen. But I wasn’t ashamed. I let him take it in.

“Can you explain anything?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Why did you choose Candor?”

I shrugged.

“Is this about—” Caleb hesitated, then pointed to the tattoo and the scar. “That? What the murderer did to you?” 

“In a roundabout way,” I said softly. 

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t answer that.

“Aren’t you…are you happy in Candor?”

“Of course. I live there most of the time. I’m here only sometimes.”

I shifted. The conversation was getting uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have been telling Caleb any of this. I shouldn’t have talked to Caleb at all. I pressed the button on the water fountain for a long time, and water spilled over the edge. 

“I’m here because things are…changing,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve felt it.”

He nodded solemnly. “Something’s wrong.”

“A lot of things are.”

“I feel like everyone’s rushing, all the time. Every day, Jeanine gives a speech about how the government is driving us to destruction. It scares me, Beatrice, I don’t know what to do.”

“Which part scares you? The government, or Jeanine giving speeches?”

He looked like he had an answer, but didn’t say it.

“Do you believe Jeanine?” I asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe.”

 _Drip._ I had long since let go of the button. But there were still drips. _Drip._

“No,” I agreed. “Neither do I. But I guess, in a way, that’s your answer.”

“To what?”

_Drip._

“Why I chose Candor,” I said. “Because I get the feeling that the truth isn’t as black and white as they make it out to be. So I’m going to find out what it really looks like.”

“It sounds like you think I’m not doing that,” said Caleb. Defensiveness crept into his voice.

“Don’t assume.” _Drip._

“Black and white—you’re one to talk, Beatrice, I thought black and white was Candor’s whole thing. Refusing to take sides. Impartiality. Hating everyone equally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re changing the subject.”

“Am I?”

“Stop playing word games.”

“I mean that if you’re looking for truth, I don’t think you’re going to find it in Candor,” Caleb snapped. “What do I mean? I mean that I’ve seen things, Beatrice, things you would never be able to explain. Everyone likes to say that Candor and Abnegation are opposite sides, but it’s the same coin. The things that are happening with the factionless, that one judge who went rogue, the justice system being unable to punish the right kind of people, it’s all the same issue.”

Anger bubbled hot in my gut. “Is it?”

“Abnegation is making bad decisions and Candor is enforcing them,” Caleb continued, barely hearing me. “It’s incompetency.”

“And you got all this from Jeanine?”

“I got this from asking questions—something we weren’t ever allowed to do before, you know that—but there, in Erudite, information is free, it’s always available.”

“So you know the whole picture because you read about it in a journal.”

“Multiple journals.”

“Apologies for the misunderstanding.”

“That’s impertinent. You’re impertinent.”

“I got _stabbed,_ Caleb.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Beatrice, I know because I’ve seen it.”

“Sight isn’t truth,” I told him. “Everyone sees what they want to believe. When you said you don’t know what you believe, I think you were lying.”

Silence fell between us. Our eyes locked, and neither of us blinked for a very long time.

“Then maybe I do believe something,” said Caleb. “But it’s better than whatever you’re doing.”

He looked down at my outfit, pieced together from Ace’s closet, my closet, and things from the Dauntless lost-and-found. Dauntless and Candor and factionless, a scavenger. Disloyal. Indecisive. _Drip._

The corridor suddenly felt too cold. Caleb wasn’t wrong. I looked at him as if we’d both changed, but had we? The last time we’d spoken in our room, before the Choosing Ceremony, was it really so different? He’d already made his decision. He had chosen his side. But me...I was lost. I was still lost. I had gotten my answer; at heart, I was Candor. I had chosen; my future could be nothing but Candor. I had made my name; the city knew me as Candor.

But my actions betrayed me. I was more similar to Aletheia than I would ever admit aloud—like her guilty pleasure of makeup, I was indulging parts of me that I knew I would soon have to strip away. I might have chosen, but I had not made up my mind. 

A distant voice snagged my thoughts. Eric. Multiple sets of boots, he had brought friends. I looked back at Caleb, suddenly panicked.

“I have to go,” I said. “You can’t tell them you saw me.”

I almost turned and left him with that. Surely, he would understand. But then I saw the coldness in his eyes, the twitch of his upper lip.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Caleb—”

“I’m not a law student like you, but I think that if you see someone committing a crime, you’re supposed to report it. Is that right?” 

The voices were growing louder. The panic rose in my throat. I grabbed his shoulders.

“We’re family, Caleb. Please.”

With a jerk, he pulled away from me, and his hand fumbled for his glasses.

“We’re not family,” he said, turning away. “I thought you made that choice already.”

For a second I was frozen. I watched him walk back into the dark. I wanted to call his name, but the voices of the Dauntless were very close now, and a pain in my chest told me that Caleb wouldn’t come back. I heard him call Eric’s name. I heard them exchange words, and Eric’s voice grew angry.

I didn’t stick around to find out what Eric would do. I turned on my heel and ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohohohohohohohohoh


	36. Chapter 36

I had messed up. I was heartbroken. And I had lost Aletheia. 

Returning to the Pit was a blessing, but also a mistake—the funeral festivities were in full swing, which meant that I could disappear, and that whatever search party Eric had sent after me would have some level of difficulty finding me. But the place had turned into the exact definition of “sensory overload”. Whoever wasn’t drunk before was drunk now, and whoever was drunk before was passed out. Huge black speakers boomed rock music. There was dancing and fighting and screaming, furious and mournful and joyous. The faces and bodies whirled around me so fast that I could have passed by Aletheia a dozen times and not recognized her.

When I reached the center of the Pit floor, I risked a glance over my shoulder. Eric stood on a crate, shouting and gesturing at a group of slightly-less-drunk Dauntless men below him. There was the search party. I dove back into the crowd. 

“Aletheia!” I screamed, my voice drowned out. _“Aletheia!”_

A boy stumbled into me. It was Uriah, his shirt soaked and his jacket unzipped.

“Tris!” he grinned, slinging his arm over my shoulder. “Duuuude…where’ve you been?”

“Uriah, I’m sorry, I have to find my friend,” I said, trying to escape, but he was strong. He pulled me close, his breath hot and thick with alcohol.

“Nooo, don’t gooo…” he whined. 

Then he hugged me. His lips touched my ear. 

 _“There’s people looking for you,”_ Uriah hissed, his voice suddenly clear. “ _Your friend’s safe. You gotta go.”_

He put his bomber jacket over my shoulders, covering my tattoo. I met his eyes. Then he knelt, picked up an empty beer bottle that had fallen on the ground, and gave it to me. The message was clear. To hide in a crowd like this, you had to try to stand out.

In one dramatic movement, Uriah scooped me up in his arms and hollered. I did the same, shrieking louder than I had ever been allowed to scream before. Uriah touched the back of my head, guiding me to bury my face in his shoulder as I dangled the bottle behind us. I couldn’t see. I didn’t know how many of Eric’s men we passed, I didn’t know where we were going, I didn’t know how Uriah had gotten Aletheia safe already. I didn’t even really know Uriah at all. But in the moment, I knew I could trust him with my life. 

We went up a few sets of stairs, and the chaos of the Pit floor seemed to retreat. Then came the sound of a door opening, a jingling bell, and quiet.

“Come inside, quick,” said a familiar voice.

I looked up as Uriah set me down. We were in the tattoo shop, all of the lights off. The voice was Tori’s, and she waved her hand urgently for us to follow her into the back.

Tori led us up a rickety set of stairs to a studio apartment, where two familiar faces were waiting. Ace and Aletheia. Aletheia was sitting very still at the kitchen table. Ace had been pacing. When she saw me, her jaw dropped and she rushed to hug me. “Phoebe...holy shit. Holy _shit._ ”

“Nobody saw you come in?” asked Tori.

Uriah shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“We’ll find out,” said Ace, pulling away from me. But she didn’t let go of my hand, both of us squeezing hard enough to hurt. I was trembling.

“Aletheia, Ace told you where to hide, right? Inside the big duffel bag?” asked Tori. Aletheia, wide-eyed, nodded. “Tris, you’re small enough to fit in the cupboard with Ace. We shouldn’t be getting customers, so if you hear the downstairs bell ring, hide. Uriah, you should go.”

“Right.” Uriah hesitated, then pulled me into a side-hug. It was different from the first one. It reminded me of Caleb’s. “Good luck, dude. May we party hard in a kinder time.”

He left and Tori locked the door behind him. Ace led me to the kitchen table, where I sat down next to Aletheia. Like a well-oiled machine, Ace and Tori exchanged glances, nodded in sync, and sat across the table to glare at me. 

“Someone needs to explain,” said Tori.

“I can do it,” Ace replied, never breaking eye contact with me. “I committed a terrible sin in one of my past lives, so God created Phoebe to ruin every moment of this one.”

I swallowed. I couldn’t even disagree. So I told them everything.

* * *

I told them about Caleb, how much faith I had in him, even though we were fighting. This was the first time he had betrayed me like this. He’d tattled on me when we were kids, of course, but selling me out to Eric—I felt like a part of me had been ripped out. Ace almost voiced her disgust at me, but Tori shushed her. Ace wouldn’t know what it was like; she was an only child.

“I’d cover for my brother, and I’d trust him to cover for me,” said Tori softly. “I’m so sorry, Tris.”

“Tris?” Aletheia echoed.

It was the first time she had spoken since I arrived. We all looked at her. In turn, I looked at Ace, who nodded.

“You can tell her everything,” said Ace. “Might as well, after how she blew her cover.”

Like an embarrassed child, Aletheia shrank in her seat. “What happened?” I asked.

Ace scowled. “She got drunk off her tits,” she explained. “She was yelling about how terrible the Dauntless were and how glad she was to be Candor. Then she tracked me down and gave me a hug. I’m assuming this was when you frolicked away to have a reunion with your brother.”

“Long story short,” Tori sighed, “everyone knows that you three are here. At least, they know that Ace and Tris—Phoebe is here, along with a second Candor initiate. But it won’t be long before they ask the Candor transfers who they saw.”

“Chrissy woul’n’t tell,” Aletheia mumbled. “She was my girlfrien’ too. B’fore Al. She still loh—l—likes me, whole bunch. They’d all liked me. Woul’nt snitch me.”

“You’re so stupid,” said Ace.

“ _Ace_ ,” I hissed.

“We can assume that they know you’re here too, Aletheia,” Tori continued. “From here...I don’t know what to do. Ace, ideally, you would have brought Aletheia to the Dauntless, but you brought her here.”

“Because Phoebe was missing,” Ace countered. “I thought something happened to her.”

Tori held up a hand. “I’m not blaming you,” she said gently. “It happened fast; it was a difficult situation. The fact of the matter is that now, the Dauntless account won’t match up. They know that Phoebe, a Candor initiate, is here. They have witness accounts that you, Ace, interacted with a second Candor initiate, then disappeared. It puts you in a compromising position. Two Candor in Dauntless at the same time, it won’t look like a coincidence. Even if you weren’t seen bringing them into the facility, you failed to report when you found Aletheia. That also won’t look like a coincidence. Not to mention that Eric has seen you with Phoebe, which links you back to her.”

“And Caleb probably gave Eric a physical description of me,” I said, “so he knows Tris McCandless is a fake identity.”

The hopelessness of the situation was starting to sink in. I put my hand over my mouth. Bringing Aletheia here, leaving her alone, and trusting Caleb had all been such a mistake. Ace had every right to be disappointed with me.

Sighing mightily, Tori pulled a box of cigarettes out of her pocket and offered them to me and Ace. Unlike many of the other Candor, I had never picked up the habit of smoking, so I declined. Aletheia wanted one, but Tori didn’t let her have it, as she was a little too drunk to be trusted holding something hot. Lighting Ace’s cigarette and then her own, Tori gave a long sigh.

“So, in my mind, there are three courses of action,” said Tori. “First, you all come absolutely clean. You take the morning train back to Candor, talk to your superiors, and accept whatever punishment they give you. Candor will give you more time to explain yourselves than Dauntless. Ace and Phoebe, if you two take responsibility for what happened, Aletheia may be able to escape punishment.”

“I don’t wanna be kicked out of Candor,” Aletheia blurted. “I can’t...can’t be factionless.”

“You won’t be,” said Tori. “You have the strongest defense. The second idea is also good for you, Aletheia, and it might be good for Ace. Ace, you will take Aletheia and Phoebe to your superiors like they would expect you to. Make up an excuse for why you didn’t bring them earlier; maybe Aletheia escaped the first time. This will put you back in Dauntless’ good graces. However...Phoebe, this will mean that you must take full responsibility. You will tell Dauntless that you convinced Ace to bring you here in the first place, perhaps you blackmailed her to get what you wanted. It’s not very convincing, but we don’t know until we try it.”

“What’s the third option?” I asked, hoping that it would be one that was good for me. So far, that hadn’t been any of them.

Tori took a long drag of her cigarette. “The third option is that none of you ever return to Dauntless or Candor,” she said. “You join the factionless. Ace and I know people who will protect you. This could do more good than harm for only one person, Phoebe—even though you’re forfeiting your place in the factions, it would free you of all your problems. Which, as I understand, there’s a lot of.”

My face fell. No, that wasn’t a good option at all. Although she was right about the problems.

The f-word clearly did not sound nice to Aletheia, either. She was really tearing up now. “I can’t be factionless,” she kept saying. “No. No, no, no.”

“We’re not doing that,” Ace agreed. “I also vote no.”

They all looked at me. 

“I wasn’t going to say yes,” I said defensively.

Ace folded her arms. “So it comes down to all of us surrendering and guaranteeing Aletheia’s safety, or trying a ruse that might save two of us, but puts Phoebe at risk.”

Tori shook her head. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“There has to be another way.”

“If you can think of something, I trust you. But you have to do it soon.”

Tori stood and stepped out of the kitchen, onto a balcony that overlooked the Pit. In my lap, my still-trembling hands gripped the fabric of my pants. I wanted to follow Tori and ask her my million questions. I wanted to cut out my tongue so I could never ask a question again. Across the table, Ace groaned and rubbed her forehead, then stood up to resume pacing.

“I can’t believe this,” said Ace, her voice higher than usual. “I really can’t believe this.”

I looked at Aletheia. “How are you feeling?” I asked quietly.

“I wanna go home,” she whimpered.

Not informative. I didn’t say that. Sighing, I helped her up and led her back to the living room, where there were a few colorful blankets and some pillows. “Rest for now,” I told her. I didn’t expect her, in such a state of nerves, to be able to rest. I certainly didn’t expect her to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillows. She started snoring instantly.

Ace was still pacing, round and round and round.

I sat on the cold concrete floor, leaning against the couch. The scarf on my head smelled of alcohol, so I ripped it off. I turned my palms to face the ceiling.

I had gone too far. I was out of my depth. I knew only one thing for sure—Ace could not be held responsible for this. I had chosen to bring Aletheia here. Before that, I had chosen to beg Ace to bring me here. And even before that, I had chosen to follow my Divergence to Candor, instead of staying in Abnegation. All of these people—Irene, Ace, Tori, Uriah, Aletheia, Lady Rose, Miriam, Judge Touma, so, so many people I could not name—had been dragged into the collateral of my choices. My selfishness. 

Caleb was right. It was time for me to decide who I was.

In the kitchen, Ace stopped and pressed her hands into her face. Then she stormed down a hallway. Moving slowly, as if in a dream, I got to my feet and followed her. She was in the bathroom, leaning against the sink. Even when I knocked on the doorframe, she didn’t look away from her reflection.

“Hey,” I said softly.

Ace didn’t respond.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” she replied.

I took it as a yes. I came up beside her and she moved her arm around me, letting me lean my head against her chest. We stared at ourselves. I was small and frail next to her. Her face was haggard, haunted; she looked years older than she really was.

“I’m tired, Phoebe.”

Slowly, I nodded. “Me too.”

Ace didn’t have a mirror in her apartment—this was the first time I had seen both of us together like this. I couldn’t take my eyes away. After a minute, I turned, stood on my tiptoes, and kissed her.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She was quiet again.

“I missed you,” I said.

“I wish we had more time,” she said.

“It’ll work out.” I didn’t know that. But I said it anyway. “We’ll find a way.”

Ace was looking down. Her fingers went up to my neck, then my collarbone, drifting against my scar. The rose.

“I shouldn’t have let you get this,” she said. “Your Full Unveiling…it’ll be hard enough without it.”

“I’m not removing it,” I replied.

“What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.”

My eyes drifted down from her eyes, to her lips, to the tattoo on her chest. The round, empty ring.

“This one,” I said. “What do you say when someone asks about it?”

Ace let me trace the edge of the ring for a moment. Then she slipped her hand under mine, brought it up, and pressed her lips against my scraped knuckles.

“That I got it out of anger,” she replied. “When Dauntless found out who I used to be. Factionless. It was…a punishment, in a way.”

“Against who?”

“Against everyone. I wanted them to look at me, top of my class, model Dauntless, so they’d remember that a factionless bastard was better than them. That’s what I tell people, that it was pride.”

She hesitated. “But?” I said softly.

“But I was four weeks into initiation, and I wasn’t happy. The whole time I was down there—in the projects—all I could think about was how, if I could only return to the factions, life would get better. And then it didn’t. The closest I ever got to a new start was being on the streets.”

“You blamed yourself.”

“I didn’t want to let myself down again. So it’s a reminder not to get my hopes up.”

I touched the ring again. Bit by bit, I felt like I was solving the mystery of Ace. She was cold because she was guarded, guarded because she was afraid, afraid because she was defeated. She’d been beaten down so many times, it was a miracle she was still sane. My other hand floated up to my rose and I wondered what the two symbols would look like together. The last piece of my plan fell into place.

“Do you know,” I said, “if I asked nicely—if Tori would do another tattoo for me before we go?”

“Irene told you to remove tattoos, not add them.”

“Yes. But I’m...I know what I have to do now.”

“Phoebe, what are you—”

I didn’t answer. I kissed her, fast and hard. She didn’t know what it meant to me, but in my heart I knew it was goodbye, so I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her as close as I could. My lower back hit the rim of the sink. I gasped into her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, but I pulled her back. 

“I want this. I want you.”

My fingers pushed through her hair and pulled. Her hands slid down my sides, but she was shaking, worse than I had ever felt before.

“You know, I’ve never—” she said quickly, “I’ve—never—”

“Is this too fast?”

“What? No! I mean…maybe.”

“I’m really sorry, I don’t know how these things work in other factions…you get it, in Abnegation, we’d have to be married by now, but, uh, that’s also really fast to be thinking about…”

“It’s not that. Not at all.”

“Then what?”

“I never told you why I call myself Ace.”

“Because all of your past names started with A. Because you aced the literacy tests.”

“Well. Yes. Those too.”

“What?”

“I think I might be asexual. You know. As in, not...not super into...you know.”

At first, I didn’t get it, the words running back and forth in my head. Then I realized.

“Oh...oh, no, that’s fine, I wasn’t implying that, _that_ was the serious end goal right now, honestly, I still don’t think I’m confident enough to do it now, anytime soon, anyway.”

Ace coughed. “Right. That’s...alright, then.”

Our hands were linked between us and I swung them back and forth idly. Ace touched my cheek.

“But if I was going to try it with anyone, just to see what everyone’s so excited about,” she said, “I’d trust you.” 

“Trust me,” I echoed quietly.

She nodded. “I do.”

We kissed again, and this time, it was slow, familiar. I knew exactly how we fit together, her arm around my waist, my fingers in her hair, the pressure of her lips on mine. We had each other memorized.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM GETTING THIS THING PRINTED! submitting the pdf to barnes and noble press this weekend, no idea how long it'll take for them to review. i wanna say i'll have my book in the next month or so, but who knows. once i do, i'll post it on my tumblr and also let you guys know here in the notes about it :)

The cuffs were cold and sharp, digging into my wrists through the bandages. My hands were so small that the Dauntless couldn’t keep the regular adult handcuffs on me, so they had to fetch a pair of special “child cuffs”. I wasn’t sure whether I was more concerned that the child handcuffs were as uncomfortable as the adult ones, sharp enough to break the skin if you pulled too hard, or if I was concerned that they had child handcuffs at all. 

It was eight in the morning. The Institute halls were bustling with people, all stopping to stare at us. I was flanked on both sides by Dauntless soldiers. My hair was matted from a sleepless night in a Dauntless holding cell and my rose tattoo was exposed; they hadn’t even allowed me the dignity of changing. My Dauntless persona was on display for all of Candor to see. As we passed the dining hall, a group of initiates were just entering.

“Phoebe?” Ravi called, the only one to speak. But I didn’t respond. I locked eyes with Oona. Her face didn’t change. She didn’t even seem surprised to see me like this.

They took me upstairs to Judge Morris’ office. I had not been inside his office before, but for how morose and cold the man was, I had imagined it was probably a dark, dreary place. It was not. It looked more like an Erudite library than anything, white and pristine, the walls and furniture all cold glass. The light was blinding, and Morris, in his black suit, stood out like an ink splotch as he sat at his desk. He was reading from a silver tablet.

“Sit,” he said, not looking up.

The Dauntless guards led me to the chair in front of Morris’ desk. He slid a small black device to them, which they clipped around my ankle. Once the device was on, they unlocked my cuffs.

“Leave us,” said Morris.

I was almost sad to see them go. I did not want to be alone in this room with the man. Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself. The white bandages covered both of my arms from my wrists to my elbows, but I could still feel the hairs struggling to rise from the chill.

Morris set the tablet down, folded his hands, and looked at me.

“Miss Prior,” he said.

“Your Honor,” I replied.

His gaze traveled down. Taking in my scar, my rose, my black tank top, my alcohol-stained pants, my spray-painted shoes, my white bandages. Among the Dauntless, the clothes were comfortable, even liberating to wear, but now, in Morris’ office, I was reminded of the self-conscious Abnegation girl who was frightened of showing skin. I clenched my hands in my lap.

“I’m...shocked,” said Morris finally. “I had expected you to cause trouble, but this much—well, I don’t know what to think.”

I was silent. He tapped a button on his tablet and a transparent screen slid up from the desk.

“As I understand it,” he began, “you chose to give an unverified original testimony to the leaders of Dauntless before requesting to return to Candor.”

“Yes,” I said.

“This testimony was forwarded to me by Dauntless leader Eric Coulter... at your request.”

“Yes.”

“In your testimony, you said that you have been trespassing into Dauntless since two Mondays ago, right after midterms. Before last night, you visited three times on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, accompanied by Institute head of security Ace of Dauntless.”

He paused to look at me, doubt on his face. For a while, he watched, as if waiting for a tell that would say that the testimony wasn’t right, but I just stared. Then he continued. 

“You used information about Ace’s past identity, Abigail Eaton, to force her to help you. You recognized her from service retreats in Abnegation and told her that unless she helped you train like a Dauntless, you would bring the evidence to Major Crimes. You wanted a risk license, but you couldn’t file for one until after initiation. So you blackmailed her. According to Eric, Ace covered for you and gave you the name Tris McCandless, claiming that you are related to the McCandless family in Dauntless.”

“I am,” I said.

Morris raised an eyebrow. “And are you aware that Irene McCandless is from the same family?”

“Yes.”

“Did Irene tell you?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“I already told the Dauntless. It should be in the testimony.”

His jaw tightened. There was no way he wouldn’t notice that I was refusing to give information that wasn’t in the original testimony.

“It says here that you figured it out yourself. You noticed the marks of healed piercings in your mother’s ears, and you once found an old ID card with your mother’s maiden name, Natalie McCandless. You used your connections with the McCandless family to deceive Eric, as well as other members of Dauntless. The artist of your tattoos, Tori Wu, provided the consent forms where you wrote your name as Tris McCandless and age as seventeen. Ace told Eric you were fifteen. You admitted to forging a fake identity and withholding information about a crime to maintain said identity. Is this correct?”

“Yes.”

“This week, you decided not to return to Dauntless until last night, when you overheard Aletheia Albright mourning the death of her ex-boyfriend, Albert Madsen. You convinced her that you could get her into Dauntless and again threatened Ace to get her to shut off the roof cameras. After taking Aletheia to Dauntless, you left her with a group of the Candor transfers and tracked down your brother, Caleb Prior, an Erudite initiate and delivery boy. According to Caleb, you asked him several invasive questions about the nature of his delivery, then threatened him not to tell anyone of your presence there in Dauntless. When you fled, he informed Eric Coulter, who sent out a search party for you.

“The next time you were seen, it was by Aletheia. However, this cannot be verified, as she was, quote, ‘black-out drunk’, and doesn’t remember most of last night. The next person of interest is Ace. Ace claims that she found Aletheia while you were in hiding. Aletheia escaped and Ace was unable to find her for several hours. According to your testimony, you found Aletheia hiding behind a barrel and took her to Tori Wu’s tattoo shop, where you hid under the claim that you were only there to get a few tattoos. The search parties would assume that the shop was closed for the day of mourning. However, Ace also came to this conclusion, and at two thirty this morning, she arrested you and Aletheia. Again, you threatened to reveal her identity, but she took you directly to the Dauntless council, a number of whom were already aware. The Dauntless council asked Candor for permission to take your original testimony for their own records, and permission was granted.”

He paused, a look like disgust passing across his face.

“Is there a problem?” I asked innocently.

“Eric told me that, for a Candor, you were unusually _tight-lipped,”_ said Morris. “When you were arrested, you said they would have to kill you before they got another word out. Then you offered them—how do I put it—an ultimatum. You would let them have the original testimony...as long as Dauntless posted your bail and requested specific legal proceedings on your behalf.”

“Did I now?”

“You requested that your verification hearing be next Saturday at the convenience of the court, conducted with 46% veritarbital.”

“Yes.”

Morris’ gaze met mine. I have often said that some people’s eyes can feel as cold as ice, but this time, I actually shivered again.

“Just to be perfectly clear,” said Morris, “you requested to be put under truth serum on the same day as your classmates’ Full Unveilings.”

“Yes.”

“I have not yet revoked your privilege to take the Full Unveiling, Miss Prior. You assume that you are already ineligible. Would it not be simpler to proceed with the verification before the Full Unveiling?”

I swallowed. “No,” I said. “If I gave my full testimony now, ineligible wouldn’t be strong enough of a word to describe what I am.”

Morris’ hands tensed. “That statement can be probable cause to overturn Dauntless’ request.”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Then beg,” I said. “Dauntless has original jurisdiction over any trespassing violations in their territory, whether committed by a member or nonmember. They’re unique among the factions for that, actually. Overturning their request would mean sending the leaders of all involved factions to mediation in the Abnegation council.”

“I am aware—”

“But I’m sure that can’t be squeezed into today’s docket; the Abnegation council is very busy. The council doesn’t meet on Sundays, so that’s out. And the leaders of Candor, Dauntless, and Abnegation all have more important things to do in the final week of initiation. Especially since the Merciless Mart will be closed on Saturday for the Full Unveiling. Six days of justice crammed into five. You could try to ask Jack Kang to take a day off, but you might also get laughed at.”

I was so terrified that my hands hadn’t stopped sweating since I’d entered this office, but for the first time, I actually felt like I had played my cards right. I even gave Morris a bittersweet smile. 

“In a way, I might have saved you time on my case,” I said. “And a verification hearing with 46% concentrated truth serum, well, no better way to ensure that I don’t leave anything out—”

Morris slammed his fist on the desk. My heart nearly stopped. When I looked, hairline fissures had spread through the glass. The man was livid, red creeping above his white collar, and in the next heartbeat I felt—for the second time—what it was like to know that someone wanted you dead. 

Then the wild fury cleared from Morris’ eyes and he drew his hand back, shaking.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing, _Beatrice Prior,”_ Morris said quietly, “but it is over. There will be powerful people on the judges’ panel, and you’ll never fool them. You’ll fail initiation, you’ll become factionless, and this whole Dauntless ruse will be dissected in a court of law. You will be locked up until you forget the light of the sun. And when—”

“That’s enough, Lysander.”

I turned. Irene stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. I hadn’t heard her open the door, which was a strange habit of hers that normally alarmed me, but I had never been more relieved to see her black glasses.

“You can’t be here,” said Morris.

“Agree to disagree.”

“Academic Integrity has been forbidden from touching this case—”

“—Because of a conflict of interests,” Irene finished.

“Good, you understand. Get out.”

Irene did not move. Slowly, she lifted her thermos to her mouth and took a long sip. 

“I’m not here as a director of Academic Integrity,” she said. “I’m here as a defense attorney. Come along, Miss Prior.”

She waved her hand to me and I stood, my knees still like jelly. But suddenly, I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders. As I followed her, I couldn’t resist turning around, smiling at Morris, and flipping him the bird.

Whatever happened to me, the bird alone made it worth it.

* * *

Irene took me back to my apartment, which was empty except for Aletheia. Her door was cracked open and I could see her passed out cold on her bed, so I draped a blanket over her and closed the door.

“Aletheia’s been cleared of all charges,” said Irene. “Suppose there’s benefits to your father being third chief justice of Candor. Her only use to the prosecution is as a witness. Which she isn’t very good at, since she was blackout drunk last night.”

She sat at the kitchen table as I made tea and a breakfast sandwich for myself. I was starving. “That’s all you have to say?” I asked.

“About Aletheia. Why?”

“I was expecting a lecture in greeting. You know. About how deep a hole I’ve dug for myself.”

“I considered it. But it almost seems like a waste of breath nowadays.”

“Thanks.”

She inhaled and paused. “I wanted to tell you that I know what you’re planning. And that—I’m going to help you.”

I stared. Then I carried my tea and breakfast to the table and laughed.

“Okay, that’s where you’re wrong, because if you knew what I was planning, then you wouldn’t want to—”

“I spoke to my sister.”

Again, I went quiet. I had never heard Irene refer to my mother as her sister.

“Mom?” I said softly. 

Irene nodded. “She woke me up at five this morning, broke into my apartment, even. Very rude and frightening. I know where _you_ got your bad manners from. She told me what had happened to you.”

“How did she know?”

“I believe she’s in contact with Ace, as well as the—rest of our family, back in Dauntless.”

Uriah must have told her. 

“She had a copy of your testimony,” Irene continued. “She sat me down and said, ‘You’ve failed.’ That’s when I knew what you were going to do.”

“I have to, Irene—”

“I know.”

“You said that you’re acting as my defense. You can’t defend what I’m going to say without getting trapped in the same boat.”

“I know that too. But if this is going to work, you need help.”

“But you—”

“I have a lot to lose. Yes.” She inhaled, then placed her hand on the table, palm up. Tentatively, I put my hand in hers. “All my life...I’ve been a liar. I cheat. I steal. I charm. I teach others to do the same. I fly under the radar, I bury names and results, I hide behind injured eyes and error screens and office miscommunication. I’m the worst Candor to ever exist, and I don’t even do it for a cause worth calling good—there’s a hundred Divergents living my lies, hoping to be good cogs in the grand machine.”

“They’re alive because of you,” I said softly. 

“And more are dead for the same reason,” said Irene. “How Candor would break down if it found that so many of its members were pretending—it scared me. It’s scared all of us, for too long.”

Her lip twitched. Her hand squeezed mine.

“It’s about time someone started telling the truth.”


	38. Chapter 38

I had one week to prepare for the Full Unveiling and three days to study for my exams. I was scared, I couldn’t sleep, I had lost my appetite, my friends weren’t talking to me, and I wasn’t allowed to do anything fun.

All in all, it could have been worse.

Saturday was spent in the law library with Irene. She wanted to take me to her office, but I now had to be careful not to trip the alarm of the ankle bracelet. It didn’t matter anyhow. Secrecy was out the window. If people in the library gave us weird looks because I was openly discussing my relationship with a Dauntless soldier or the experience of being stabbed, then so be it. 

The conditions for my house arrest were as follows:

I could stay in my room, attend class, eat in the dining hall, and go out into the courtyard. That was it. No Antigone’s, no Merciless Mart, no roof. I could not be in contact with Aletheia or Ace. Ace was easy to avoid because she had been given an assignment back in Dauntless, whatever that meant. Aletheia was moved out of my apartment and into a temporary room, so she was also easy to avoid.

But I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, alone. Oona was the last one left in the apartment, and she was given a special job—the job of the prison warden. Her class schedule was modified so that she could attend class with me. She was given a pager to call the Dauntless guards if I did anything suspicious. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom without telling her, lest she file a report. Every night, she had to check that I was in bed and my ankle bracelet was still on. Then she would lock me in. I was allowed to come out in the morning when she woke up. The only time I could be separated from her was if I was with Irene, talking about my case.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we were still on speaking terms. Initially, I had even had hopes for the arrangement. Perhaps we could put our little fight behind us. Surely, she couldn’t like this any more than I did; we could bond about that.

But I was wrong. A change had come over Oona, something unnamable that chilled me to the bone. She didn’t joke about things. She was always clutching a little package of flash cards, covered with notes and definitions. She took so much medication and drank so much coffee that her body trembled constantly. And every time I tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t engage me, giving only a terse response or silence.

It made meals agonizing.

On Sunday night, the table more resembled a study group than a dinner. Everyone had papers, books, and laptops strewn out in front of them. It wasn’t just the initiates, either; the 1Ls and 2Ls had their semester exams next week and the 3Ls had the bar exam in two weeks. After that, we would all be free for two months, our summer break, before rejoining the vicious cycle of academia.

“They don’t have as much to worry about, though,” Ravi pointed out. He had become inseparable from his headphones; he liked to multitask and listened to the class lectures while doing practice problems. “If they fail, they just gotta repeat the year, and they can try over and over until they pass. We only have this one chance.”

“But our exams aren’t as hard,” said Brighton. “We’ll be fine.”

“Lie,” said three people at once.

“The way I see it,” said Leanne, nibbling on a salad leaf by leaf, “these exams aren’t so much to filter out unworthy initiates as they are a filter for unworthy future lawyers. I’m tired of academia, guys. I have no intention of going through law school. I am getting a paralegal’s certificate, settling down at a low-level office job, and that is it. No more classes, no more exams.”

“Those don’t pay as well, though,” Zac pointed out.

“A small apartment and cats,” Leanne sighed. “That’s all I want.”

Ravi sniffed. “Never thought I’d see the day when Leanne wants to leave school as fast as possible.”

“Never thought I’d see the day when Ravi wants to _stay_ in school as long as possible,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.

We all looked at him. He gave an awkward laugh and leaned on his elbows. “I mean, what can I say? You learn stuff about yourself during initiation. Assuming I pass—which is a grand assumption in its own right—I don’t think I’d make a bad detective. So yeah, law school’s my plan, but only the law enforcement sequence, no bar exam.”

“Every time I hear the words ‘bar exam’, I throw up a little in my mouth,” said Brighton.

“Hey, _you_ wanted to be a lawyer,” said Ravi.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

A few people chuckled at that. “Least I’ll have Sherlock with me,” Brighton grinned, slinging his arm over Sherlock’s thin shoulders.

Sherlock seemed almost alarmed at the sudden movement. He was like that nowadays, jumpy and quiet, always following around in Oona’s shadow. Or at least, he had, until she became my warden. Now he just stared at us strangely from across rooms.

“Oh. Uh, yeah,” said Sherlock.

“He’s still stuck on the defense attorney thing,” said Brighton.

Sherlock looked askance and cleared his throat. “Actually... I was thinking of changing to prosecution. There’s so much trouble with the factionless nowadays, I...um...I want to help punish the people responsible.”

I had been eating a spoonful of peas at the time and it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut, lest they all roll out. I swallowed. 

“What? Why?” I asked.

The whole table fell silent. Oops. I hadn’t spoken much since Friday’s incident, and here I was, calling attention to myself.

“I was just asking a question,” I said sullenly. 

“Um...no, no, that’s alright,” Sherlock laughed airily. “Nothing against you, Phoebe. I know the topic of, uh, criminal prosecution might be a little sensitive, since you’re, um—”

“A future jailbird,” I supplied. 

Sherlock’s face was burning red. The awkwardness at the table was thick enough to be smelled. 

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Sherlock. 

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” said Oona. 

I looked at her in surprise. She wasn’t looking up and was bent over her notebook, writing so hard that her pen threatened to rip the paper. 

“I just think we need more good prosecutors nowadays, that’s all,” Sherlock finished hastily. 

“Maybe we do, but why the change of heart?” I asked.

Sherlock’s dark eyes grew cold. “I was in Beauregard’s attic too, Phoebe. We can’t be soft on criminals anymore or worse tragedies will happen.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” I said. 

“Then what about you?” asked Oona, putting down her pen.

“I’m sorry?”

“What did you want to do here in Candor? Assuming you ever wanted to do anything legal or ethical. We’re all going through with this for a reason, what was yours?”

I met her eyes. I couldn’t read hers beyond the malice. She was testing me, I knew, but why, I couldn’t say. Deep down, I wanted to turn the question on her and demand to know why she was doing this to me, but I didn’t. The Abnegation in me didn’t want to make a scene. I swallowed and stirred my peas. 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “After Beauregard, I thought I might want to do detective work, but I don’t know anymore. I’m not smart enough to be a lawyer. I considered becoming some sort of faction ambassador; being a transfer would help...but four of the five factions are mad at me now, so not good tidings for a career.”

I laughed, trying to turn it into a joke, but nobody else laughed.

If this all went pear-shaped, maybe jail was the best option for me. You didn’t have to strive to become anything in jail. You only had to survive it. 

After dinner, I was allowed to meet with Irene in the library to study and write my testimony. Oona sat several tables away, her head in a snowdrift of legal briefs. While Irene rambled on about types of motions of dismissal, I watched Oona, wondering what she might have said if I had turned the question on her. What did she want out of her presence here? Contentment? Clarity? The further she got in initiation, the further she seemed to draw from either ideal. I wish I had more time to solve her mystery. Her father was here in Candor, perhaps he held answers. Perhaps she was trying to make him proud. Was this dark mood just an attempt at erasing the last Amity parts of her?

“Irene, I have a question,” I said, cutting off her lecture.

“Questions at the end,” replied Irene. “Motion 12b6 now. ‘Failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted’. It’s a relic from archaic civil procedure, but it’s still quite useful.”

I asked my question anyway. “What do you do when your friends are mad at you?”

Irene frowned. “I don’t have friends. Now, as I was saying—”

“Oona’s angry with me, and I don’t know why,” I said. “I’ve tried to ask her, but she won’t talk to me. She’s not lying, but she is hiding something, and nothing I do can make her tell me.”

Across the room, Oona looked up and glared at me, as if hearing her name. Though that was impossible, because she was wearing headphones...unless there was no sound on and she was eavesdropping, like I did on occasion.

“Well,” Irene sighed, “I would accept it and move on. No good Candor bottles up their feelings for long, so it’ll come out eventually.”

I turned to Irene and lowered my voice. “But that’s the thing. She’s not fully Candor. She’s Amity, too, she likes peace—whatever she’s holding back, it’ll destroy our relationship.”

“Is it not already destroyed?”

“I mean...okay.”

“Don’t worry about her. Worry about you. 12b6 _will_ be mentioned on the Procedure exam, I can assure you that.”

She rapped my forehead with the eraser end of a pencil, impeccable aim for a blind woman.

“Ow,” I said, then gave in.

Irene was at least partially right—I had a lot to worry about. My practice tests for Logical Reasoning were all coming back in the mid- to low-nineties and Judge Bandele assured me that I would do fine in the Arguments exam.

But Legal Procedure and Investigations were both taught by Judge Morris. Of course, he couldn’t singlehandedly destroy my score; the tests were graded by a panel of multiple Institute professors. But he did write the exams. Irene and I were both particularly worried about the Legal Procedure exam. Sixty percent multiple choice questions, fifteen percent short answer, twenty-five percent essay. The essay was supposed to be written as an opinion piece, and if the opinion wasn’t valid enough, Judge Morris might just strike the whole section from my exam. I would fail it and potentially sink my average score. 

There wasn’t anything I could do about that. Investigations, Arguments, and the Procedure essay were all up to the luck of the draw.

So Sunday and Monday were mile after mile of true-false, black-and-white, multiple-choice questions. Irene tested me in Logic until my practice tests came back flawless. She taught me mnemonics and quirky songs to remember every little corollary that might show up in the Procedure multiple choice. In my bedroom, I tore down my wall of conspiracy notes and replaced it with a thousand notecards about moral arguments, and on Monday morning, I found myself curled up on the floor and wrapped like a burrito in my bisexual flag. For the hell of it, I wore it to class, tied around my neck like a cape. I got some looks and one older professor yelling at me for breaking the dress code. I didn’t care.

On Monday night, I met with Irene one last time. As part of the conditions for my house arrest, she was not allowed to contact me from Tuesday until Saturday, the morning of the Full Unveiling. I would face my exams alone. Before bed, I had one cup of honey chamomile tea and two milligrams of melatonin.

On Tuesday morning, I took my Legal Procedure and Logical Reasoning exams.

On Tuesday night, I had three cups of tea and five milligrams of melatonin. 

On Wednesday morning, I took my Arguments and Investigations exams. 

On Wednesday night, I had several shots of vodka. At the encouragement of Ravi, the only person left who would hang out with me on miserable Wednesday nights, I tried cigarettes for the first time. I didn’t like them. Ravi said that was okay and that now there were more for him. He said, “Might as well pretend this is a celebration.”

Thursday I spent hungover. I didn’t like that either. I slept and cried some, and to top off the day I sat in the bathtub for an hour or so.

Friday I prayed. I prayed a lot. I wanted to go back to the Gathering Place and find the priest—even the rabbi or the imam would be good enough, so long as they were okay with it—but security wouldn’t let me. Before bed, I forced myself not to touch the bottle of vodka and drink tea instead. The melatonin didn’t help tonight. The only thing that helped was crying myself to sleep.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at seven. Oona was in the doorway, wrapped in a white robe.

“Hurry up,” she said tersely.

I didn’t argue. Once she left, I closed the door and inhaled, long and slow. I found the outfit that I had laid out last night and folded it carefully into my bag. At the advice of Irene, I had prepared for the worst; in the event that my Full Unveiling testimony wasn’t taken so well, I might be taken immediately to trial. I packed my finest outfit, black pants and white boots, a black capelet fastened by a silver chain and pin. The pin was a gift from Irene, engraved with the scales of justice. It would send a good message, she had said. On top of the clothes I set my little black journal, its last pages filled. Then I undressed.

Hanging in the closet was an outfit that I had never touched. It had appeared there on Wednesday night, after finishing my final exam, and stared at me all week. Every initiate had gotten this uniform and they were all identical, indiscriminate to gender identity or comfort level. A white modesty skirt that fell halfway down the thigh. A long white robe and white linen shoes. It wasn’t cold in the room, but as I tied on the skirt, my chest bare, I shivered. 

I touched the cotton wraps on my forearms. It had been one week since I had gotten my new tattoos, so they were long since healed. But the Candor didn’t know that. If I wasn’t wearing long sleeves, I continued to wrap them with new cotton, wanting to keep them hidden until today—the big day, the Full Unveiling. Slowly I unwrapped the cotton, letting it fall to the ground by my bare feet. 

I straightened my back and met my own eyes in the full-length closet mirror. Every red hair, every freckle, every healing scrape, every drop of ink exposed.

Six weeks ago, another girl stood where I did, cloaked head to toe in indifferent grey, hidden in self-absorbed shame, asking herself if she had the right to call herself something new. What a creature she had become. I couldn’t have known what would happen when I chose Candor, and I still couldn’t say that it was the right choice. But I saw something impossible in the silver before me. Call it chance, call it destiny, call it divine intervention, but something had moved to bring me here.

If I didn’t speak, nobody would.

* * *

Oona accompanied me as far as the main lobby, where seventeen other initiates in identical white robes milled and chattered nervously. The low grumble of hunger ran underneath the hum of small talk. We weren’t supposed to eat for at least twelve hours before taking the truth serum. Those of us who were going closer to the end were allowed to eat last night’s dinner; the rest were only allowed to have lunch. Few of us had eaten dinner anyway.

At seven thirty, a man entered the lobby with two Candor bailiffs and took roll call. I recognized him as Ben, the other Candor proctor from the aptitude tests. He worked with Irene. As we filed out of the Institute, he stopped me in the door. I was the last one in line.

“Check her,” he said to the bailiffs.

They dug through my bag and patted me down over my robe. Both were women, which I wasn’t sure was better or worse. As they took off my ankle bracelet with a special tool, I watched as the rest of the initiates went ahead, crossing over to the Merciless Mart. Then one bailiff fastened handcuffs around my wrists.

I looked at Ben. “Is this really necessary?”

“I don’t know, was it necessary to interrupt my date with Irene?” Ben retorted.

I frowned. For a while, I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about.

“Since when does she date men?” I asked.

“She went on a date with _me,”_ said Ben. “I mean, it wasn’t strictly a date. Lunch between colleagues. But it could have _become_ one, if not for you.”

Opening my mouth, I prepared to launch into my list of reasons why I really didn’t like how Ben said that and, also, I was pretty positive that Irene was a lesbian, but then remembered. “Oh,” I said. “That thing about me breaking into the aptitude testing room…I thought she kept that a secret.”

“Until yesterday. God, sometimes I wish we _could_ keep some things secret. That, on top of her involvement with you and the Jeanine Matthews controversy, has made her the single biggest problem for the Ethics Committee, which I had the _misfortune_ of being the spokesman for. She hates me now. You’ve ruined everything.”

I thought about that last part for a while. Had I ruined everything? Huffing, Ben followed after the initiates and beckoned for the bailiffs to escort me along. As we passed the statue of Themis, I picked out the places where graffiti had been scrubbed off a hundred times.

“No,” I said finally. “Not yet.”


	39. Chapter 39

The Full Unveiling was held on the top floor of the Merciless Mart’s central tower. Or, more accurately, the top five floors of the central tower. Long ago, the Candor took all of the essential parts of the old Merchandise Mart—such as the foundations and roof—and carved them out, leaving the historic outside shell intact. Art deco was kind of their thing, after all. One of the major changes was the basement distillery, where the Candor manufactured their infamous truth serum. I had already seen that. I hadn’t yet seen what they did to the roof.

Its formal name was the Grand Courtroom. Most Candor called it “the Coliseum”. It was the only courtroom large enough to fit the whole faction. It had, indeed, been modeled after a Roman arena, concentric circles of seats descending into a central courtroom floor, but that wasn’t where the Coliseum got its name. The Choosing Ceremony room was similar. The difference was that the Choosing Ceremony room did not see many death row inmates. The worst types of criminals were tried in the Grand Courtroom—pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and prospective lawyers.

When we filed inside and sat down in the inner circle, the whole faction was there, every seat filled and every voice talking. Only adult members were allowed to witness the Full Unveiling, though I recognized many of them as being not much older than we were. The morning sun poured into the room through the glass ceiling and some window panels were open to let in fresh air. It really was a nice day. The judges’ bench was empty, but a clerk and a reporter were already preparing their typewriters and cameras. 

I looked down the row at my peers. Loose hair, clear faces, white robes. Identical, except for the fact that I was the only one wearing handcuffs. Some of us held notebooks or folders in our hands, prepared testimonies, but not many. Oona was to my right, since her last name was Posner—there was some joke to be made about this feeling like the Choosing Ceremony all over again. Her head was bowed, her beautiful hair hiding her face like a curtain. Far down the line, Ravi was shrinking deep into his robe and clutching his folder. He couldn’t be excited about needing to take it off without the comfort of his binder. Sherlock’s hands were quaking so bad that I could see it from my seat. 

One minute to eight, Jed Fitzgerald, the other Amity transfer, stood up sharply.

“I can’t do it!” he screamed, and took off running.

A sudden hush rippled through the crowd of Candor. They watched Jed run like his life was on the line, pushing past the bailiffs. Just like that, he was factionless.

Up on the judge’s bench, Judge Morris had been chatting with a few older Candor. He gave the room a cold smirk before leaning into the microphone and saying, “Well, he didn’t pass the exams anyway.”

Too many people laughed. My stomach turned.

The doors opened again, but not to let another terrified initiate leave. Jack Kang appeared, flanked by four other judges in long black robes.

“All rise,” said a bailiff. 

As one, all of Candor stood. 

Kang took his place in the center of the judges’ bench, the other four judges on the lower platforms behind desks with shiny metal nameplates. Kang was the youngest one on the bench. Judge McDougall and Judge Coulter-Moore both looked old enough to be someone’s great-grandmothers, and Judge Paylor possessed a striking resemblance to a dried banana crisp with a receding hairline. Judge Williams seemed to be the second youngest, with a kindly dark face and a beautiful braided bun. I already liked her.

“Please be seated,” Kang said into the microphone. As one, all of Candor sat.

“The Full Unveiling is now in session,” announced the clerk, a mousy woman with a nasally voice. “Each testimony shall be heard by the Honorable Bryn McDougall, the Honorable Leslie Coulter-Moore, the Honorable Thaddeus Paylor, and the Honorable Dasanya Williams. The Honorable Jack Kang, executive director of Candor, shall preside over the questioning and serve as the deciding vote in the event of a tie.”

I looked out over the crowd. Only now had it occurred to me to search for Irene. She sat in the second row near the stairs and was the only person wearing sunglasses. 

The clerk continued. “Initiates. By consenting to this test, you consent for video evidence of your testimony to be recorded and broadcast for the free and live viewing of anyone within the city limits. To respect the modesty laws of other factions, you shall only be filmed from the shoulders up.”

A relief. Thankfully, I had known about that part, or else I might not have consented to doing the Full Unveiling. Irene and I had planned accordingly. 

At that point, the clerk opened her mouth to continue reading from her tablet, but hesitated. She turned around to look at Jack Kang, who nodded. “To conclude this ceremony,” said the clerk, looking a little pale, “the court shall hear the verified testimony of the Abnegation transfer Beatrice Phoebe Prior, charged with multiple counts of felony trespassing, identity theft, and fraud. Honorable Justices, under the protection of Dauntless, Prior has requested special accomodations for her verification hearing of these charges. She wishes to undergo the Full Unveiling with her peers and requests, along with judgment upon her testimony, the judgment of her membership in Candor. Justices, shall you move to grant Miss Prior these privileges?”

“Aye,” said Judge McDougall.

“Abstain,” said Judge Coulter-Moore.

“Nay,” said Judge Paylor.

“Aye,” said Judge Williams.

Jack Kang rubbed his chin. After a moment, he said, “Abstain.”

“Motion passed with a plurality of two,” said the clerk. “Miss Prior’s testimony has been added to the docket, to be heard at the convenience of the court.”

There were so many eyes on me that my skin was crawling. Now, I forced myself to stop looking in awe and abject terror around the room and to stare straight in front of me. I focused on the uncomfortable-looking metal chair in the center of the room. 

“I would like to say a few words before we begin,” said Kang. “Although you will be hearing many, many words today, so I’ll try to make it brief.”

Some of the Candor chuckled. I wasn’t sure what the joke was yet. Kang smirked and folded his hands on the desk before him.

“Let’s be honest with each other—nobody chooses Candor because they think it will be fun. Our life doesn’t offer much. Our members aren’t extraordinary by nature. Our children transfer out at record rates. This year, of the forty-three sixteen-year-olds to grow up in Candor, only eight stayed, and only twelve transferred in to take their place. Granted, these numbers are a little unusual, but the point is clear.

“For a sixteen-year-old, there are futures that are so much brighter than what we offer in Candor. Amity offers a future of ease and indulgence. Dauntless offers a future of thrill and rebellion. Erudite offers a future of wealth and ambition. Abnegation offers a future of community and security. Each offers something better than what you came from—contentment, sex appeal, validation, or fulfillment.”

He paused to smile at an unsaid thought.

“Yet, for your own reasons, you chose a future of stress and misery. To commit yourselves to truth. There are no benefits, no returns, and no dividends to that kind of choice. Every day, you will struggle with that very human bit of self-preservation inside of you that tells you to lie, and you will not always win. Both truth and lies will cause conflict in your lives. You can take as much truth serum as you like. You can hold all your hope in the changing power of the Full Unveiling. But if anyone has told you that honesty becomes easier with time, they are lying.

“The pursuit of truth is a choice that you make whenever you take a breath. The breaths will become harder. Sometimes you will try, choke, and feel as if you have failed. And it is this, I think, that makes a true Candor. Not the lack of dishonesty, or the lack of the struggle—but the choice to admit your failings, to choose justice over nature, and to move forward.”

Kang let his eyes roam the room. For a second, they landed on mine, and I could swear he held them. But I wasn’t sure if that was just wishful thinking. He had to know what I planned to do, or he wouldn’t have given that sympathetic little smile afterwards.

“That being said…let’s begin.”

 

\+ + +

 

It was going to be a long, nervous, uncomfortable day. 

Aletheia was first. When they called her name, she stood up, walked to the bailiff at the edge of the center circle, and undressed. Then, clothed in only the white skirt, Aletheia held her chin high and approached the bench. Her face was clean of makeup—besides a few red acne spots around her nose, it was still flawless. I wondered what she had been trying to fix. Her face was just as perfect as her body. 

“Miss Albright,” said Jack Kang. “Do you consent to receive your exam scores, take an injection of 46% concentrated veritarbital, and answer the questions of the court?”

“Yes,” said Aletheia.

“Thank you. You received an average of 90 on your final exams. Please be seated.”

That brought a smile to Aletheia’s face as she sat in the chair. I hadn’t doubted that she would pass, but clearly, she had. 

Ben approached Aletheia with a clear syringe, its needle almost as long as the Dauntless serum. He pulled her long blond hair out of the way, positioned the point over a vein in her neck, and injected the full syringe. When he stepped back, five panels rose from the floor, surrounding Aletheia. One-way mirrors—we could see her, but all she could see was herself. 

Jack Kang cleared his throat into the microphone. 

“May the truth set you free,” he said.

And so it began.

As Irene had told us earlier, the traditional line of questioning followed Candor’s eight vices, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, wrath, pride, and deceit. I had wondered how they planned to ask every single question relating to each vice, but it turned out they didn’t need to. Apparently, 46% truth serum had a mind of its own. As soon as the word ‘lust’ left Kang’s mouth, Aletheia blurted, “I’m still in love with Al. I snuck out last week and went to his funeral in Dauntless. I got so drunk, I don’t even remember what happened after they set him on fire. I just love him so much. I miss him. Every day I dream about what our family would’ve been like.”

I sighed. Yes, it was going to be a very long day.

To my surprise, Aletheia wasn’t quite as scandalous of a person as I thought, though some of the things she did to her siblings were cruel, bordering on sadistic. The makeup thing was a big deal in the pride and deceit category, but I’d already known about that. 

Aletheia rambled on for about twenty minutes at the gentle prompting of the judges, crying the whole time, before the serum began to wear off. She went small and silent in her chair, gripping her seat with white knuckles. Slowly, Jack Kang asked, “Miss Albright, is there anything more you wish to say?”

She shook her head. 

“Thank you for your candor.”

In unison, the crowd echoed, “Thank you for your candor.”

“Please approach the bench,” said Kang.

The mirrors slid down and she looked up. Her knees trembling like a newborn foal’s, she stepped towards the panel of judges.

“Justices, do you grant Aletheia Albright membership into Candor?” asked the clerk.

Four “ayes” from the four judges. Jack Kang smiled down at Aletheia. 

“Congratulations,” he said.

The whole room applauded. Aletheia burst into tears again—tears of joy. The bailiff approached with a new robe, black with a white sash and silver cord, and draped it over her shoulders. As she returned to her seat, I saw her face again. It was brighter and lovelier than ever before. 

“Ravi Balakrishnan,” said the clerk.

He bounded up with his folder, his prepared testimony. My shoulders relaxed. Gone was the terror from Ravi’s face; he actually seemed excited now. Still nervous, but ready. He faced the room with his stance set, untied his robe, and stepped towards the bench.

But he didn’t see what I saw. Jack Kang’s face was suddenly cold again. Troubled. Something was wrong.

“Mr. Balakrishnan,” he said slowly, “do you consent to receive your exam scores, take an injection of 46% concentrated veritarbital, and answer the questions of the court?”

“I’m ready,” said Ravi, grinning.

Kang hesitated. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. You received an average of 84 on your final exams. You are ineligible to take the Full Unveiling.”

My heart almost stopped. 

The room was reeling. Not him. Not Ravi. He worked so hard. He had a dream. He wanted to be a detective. An 84, one point short of passing; that was the score Oona had gotten on her midterms and she received nothing but praise for it. Ravi got a door slammed in his face.

“No,” he murmured. “That can’t be it—”

“Ravi Balakrishnan, from this day forth, you are factionless,” said Kang.

“But that’s not fair!” Ravi burst. He rushed towards the judges and gripped the podium like a life raft. “Look—please—I didn’t get accommodations until last week; I was told that they’d judge my grade differently—”

“The Justices have already reviewed your case,” the clerk put in. “A 3-2 majority decided that you failed. Bailiffs, get him away from the bench.”

Two bailiffs approached Ravi. “No!” He shook his head. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t justice. You _lied_ to me!”

They grabbed him by the arms and threw his white robe over him again. But Ravi began to fight. He kicked his legs, jerked his head, and balled his hands into fists. His name escaped my mouth, and as they dragged him past me to the door, we locked eyes. 

“Help me,” he gasped.

The bailiffs took him away and closed the doors, cutting off the last screams.

The Full Unveilings continued. But I barely heard. It was just Ravi’s scream over and over in my head. My first instinct was to be optimistic. Maybe he and Jed would cross paths on the way out and they could set off together. Surely, if a thirteen-year-old Abigail Eaton could survive sudden factionlessness, then Ravi, the toughest bastard I knew, would be fine. But there was so much happening now, like whispers of revolution and half-Dauntless patrols with too many guns. Ravi was from Erudite. Could the factionless tell? It made my mouth go dry as sandpaper to think of what might happen to him. And that very soon, it might be happening to me.

My fingers tightened around my journal. Several times today my resolve to continue with this plan had faltered. No, this was the reason I had to press on. For Ravi, Jed, and Katie. For me.

The only thing I heard in the next three hours was the first part of Sherlock’s testimony. “I’m sleeping with Oona,” he said, his voice flat from the truth serum.

Instead of making him cry, like it had for Aletheia, all emotion seemed to drain from him. His green eyes were hollow and pale, underlined with deep shadows.

“We’ve been seeing each other since Phoebe rejected me. But I don’t even know if I like Oona. I don’t know if I ever liked Phoebe. I know that I like the sex. But I don’t know what to feel. Maybe I just went to Oona because I was lonely. Phoebe was the only one who would understand what it’s like—almost dying there in the attic, feeling so vulnerable and frightened all the time, being terrified of being alone. But Phoebe...did her own thing. The opposite. She became solitary and secretive. She started going out all the time, we’d see her with that Dauntless woman and sneaking around in places she shouldn’t have been, and it terrified me. Oona didn’t understand it, either. Maybe we only got close because we were both lonely. Phoebe abandoned both of us. So we tried to make ourselves feel better with each other, so we wouldn’t go insane.”

On the bench, Judge Paylor leaned back and folded his arms. The clerk was typing up a storm. Next to me, Oona’s shoulders were stiff and her lower lip tight, as if she was biting it hard.

I had known how my actions affected Oona. But I had never thought about Sherlock. Besides our few direct message chats and our talk at the party, I had assumed that we weren’t very close; after all, he had all his Candor-born friends. What was special about me? And if he felt that way, why hadn’t he said anything?

The Full Unveiling went on for three hours before the judges called for an intermission. The second that the first audience member stood up to run for the bathroom, two bailiffs zoomed to my sides. I gave them pointed looks. 

“If I wanted to escape,” I said, miffed, “I would’ve figured it out long ago.”

This didn’t help.

After the intermission, during which the audience and new members had a small lunch, the Unveilings resumed. Everyone who went up had passed the exams—everyone except for Ravi—and everyone faced the truth serum with their chins high. I tried to listen. But it was hard; these secrets were depressing. The most confident confessed that they were depressed and anxious. The most modest confessed to wretched sins in the dead of night. The most responsible confessed to addictions beyond imagination. In the glaring lights, all scars, birthmarks, and deformities were on display on bare skin. I could fill several books with what I heard and what I felt. But I never would, because most of all, I felt like an intruder; I was hearing each and every secret only to walk towards factionlessness. These were the Candors’ secrets to know. Not mine.

“Thank you for your candor,” I echoed with the crowd, hollow, guilty.

“Oona Posner,” said the clerk.

Oona stood up. In the row beyond her, fifteen new Candor watched us. Oona and I were the last two left, the only ones still wearing the white robes instead of the black ones. 

When Oona reached the bench, however, something changed. Kang asked her if she would like to hear her scores. She said yes. He paused, then smiled, and said, “Miss Posner. Allow me the honor of announcing something quite special, something that hasn’t happened since...well, since me. Congratulations, Miss Posner, for your score of 100.”

Oona’s jaw dropped. The audience exploded into applause. In the third row, I saw Oona’s father and stepmother jump to their feet, clearly wanting to run down and congratulate her, but they stayed put. A perfect score. In the moment, it didn’t matter what kind of fight we had between us; I was proud of her. She’d worked hard for it.

Still smiling, Oona sat in the chair and held out her arm for the truth serum. Suddenly, my stomach flipped. I was next. I tried to distract myself by listening to Oona’s answers, but despite my hunger, I was so nauseous that I could only focus on not retching.

And then Oona went silent and it was over and I hadn’t heard a single word of it. She stepped up to the podium. The judges all said yes. The black robe fell over her shoulders and the room applauded again.

As Oona returned to her seat, the eyes returned to me for the second time that day. The clerk said my name and something else, a repeat of what she’d said before, about my testimony also containing the truth about my crimes.

I didn’t hear it. I just looked up at the sky, a blue that I could only pray to see again.


	40. Chapter 40

“The court will now hear the testimony of Phoebe Prior,” announced the clerk. “Miss Prior invoked her right to legal counsel and shall be represented at this hearing by Irene McCandless.”

From the audience, Irene stood up and cautiously made her way down the stairs, feeling with her cane. As she did, the bailiffs returned to me and led me to the edge of the center circle, even though I had already been going. Just like everyone before me, I stepped out of my shoes. The black marble floor was cold on my feet. One bailiff unlocked my handcuffs, though it was only to pull the robe off my shoulders. As she locked the cuffs again, the bailiff raised her eyebrows at the colorful ink on the insides of my arms. But she said nothing, only gave me back my journal to hold.

I stood exposed in front of Candor. As I approached the judges and stopped next to Irene, I kept my eyes forward, but in the periphery, I could see the glaring red and green of the rose tattoo. There were whispers. I wasn’t the first Candor initiate to reveal secret tattoos, but all of those initiates had been Dauntless.

“Miss Prior, do you have your prepared testimony?” asked Jack Kang.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said quietly, my voice cracking. He held out his hand and I gave it to him. He frowned as his eyes caught on something else, the flashes of ink on my arms, but he didn’t say anything. He passed the journal to the clerk. “I’m reading the part between the two red bookmarks,” I added to her, and scowling, she began passing the selected pages through a machine on her desk.

“Miss McCandless,” said Kang.

“Yes, Your Honor?” Irene replied.

He stopped thumbing through a plastic folder with my name on it to look up at her, his eyebrows raised. After a second of silence, Irene asked, “Did you need something, Your Honor?”

“I expected you to have quite a bit to say,” said Kang. “What your client wants is highly unconventional. Do you have no objections?”

“Not yet,” said Irene. “Proceed, Your Honor.”

The clerk finished passing my journal through the machine and handed it back to me. Irene touched my shoulder, nodded, and stepped out of the way. At least, until I needed her counsel after the testimony, which I undoubtedly would.

“Miss Prior,” said Kang. “Do you consent to receive your exam scores, take an injection of 46% concentrated veritarbital, and answer the questions of the court?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said.

“Do you intend to verify the testimony you provided one week ago upon your arrest by the Dauntless?”

“Yes.”

“And do you swear that your new, prepared testimony is, to the best of your knowledge, a truthful and accurate account of your secrets?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. You received an average of 87 on your final exams. Please be seated.”

There was enough tension in my spine that it might shatter if you tapped it too hard, but at that, I relaxed a little. I had passed. Just barely, though it didn’t matter; a pass was a pass. I turned to the chair and the tension returned. I had much more important things to think about than an exam score. Or not think about. Maybe it was better if I didn’t try to think too hard. There wasn’t much I could do to manipulate what I was going in to. My testimony was already written and copied for the judges to read.

I sat and opened my journal in my lap. On the selected pages, the last chunk in the book, I had actually written legibly. Ben came up with the final syringe and pushed my curly hair out of the way, his face in a frown. There were a lot of frowns out there. Nobody knew what they were about to hear. And if I was honest, I didn’t either. 

I had to trust myself.

There was a pinch, and the serum washed over me like a wave. Ben stepped back and the five one-way mirrors slid up around me. At eye level in the first mirror was a raised circular section, where I knew a camera was staring back at me. The tiny red light signified that it was recording my every move and word. I sat before all of Candor and all of Chicago. The mirrors just told me I was alone.

“May the truth set you free,” said Kang’s voice.

* * *

I had felt truth serum before, at a weaker dose. But that was different. This kind felt like a dream. I had rehearsed this first part enough times to commit it to memory. I was moving without thinking. Speaking without reading. Feeling without knowing.

I didn’t like the cold cuffs around my wrists. I couldn’t hold my book like I wanted to. I lifted my hands above my head, feeling thick and clumsy from the serum, and rummaged through my hair to find the single pin. I kept my hands up, resting them on my forehead as I probed the lock.

“My name is Beatrice Phoebe Prior,” I said. 

My words were slow, thick. But my fingers were moving like they were made to break chains.

“I am an initiate of Candor and a transfer from Abnegation. I am the child of Andrew Prior and Natalie McCandless Prior, and I am the older twin of Caleb Prior. I am sixteen years old.”

The lock clicked. The handcuffs fell. I looked right in the camera and the little red dot, still holding my hands above my head, letting them get a clear view of the tattoos on my wrists.

On the right arm were three symbols. In gold ink was the delicate budding tree of Amity, in dark grey were the gentle clasped hands of Abnegation, in ocean blue was the curious eye of Erudite. On the left arm were a mirrored three. In black ink were the Dauntless flames; in silvery ink were the balanced scales of Candor; and between the two was a symbol of my own design, a red one, a single rose ringed with thorns. The factionless, and Lady Rose, and Ace, and me.

“My name is Phoebe Prior,” I repeated, “and I am Divergent.”

Beyond the mirrors, there were murmurs. A male voice yelled, “Stop filming! Stop it!” but a loud _crack_ made the voices go silent.

“Order! All Full Unveilings must be broadcast to the public in their entirety,” said Kang. “Miss Prior will speak until she has nothing more to say.” The red light stayed on.

I lowered my hands, picked up my journal, and looked at it. My vision was blurry. It was frustrating. I tossed the journal to the ground, its pages scattering, and it slid to a stop at a mirror.

“I don’t want to read,” I said thickly. “Can’t see well. Don’t worry, I didn’t leave anything out of the version you got, and I won’t leave anything out now. You can quote me on that.”

“Objection!” said the male voice again. It was Judge Morris. “Failure to respect the prepared testimony.”

“A reminder, Lysander, that you’re not on the bench,” said Kang.

“He is right, though,” said Judge Coulter-Moore. “Prepared testimonies _must_ be read aloud for purposes of comparison.”

“If Miss Prior testifies to the same information,” said Judge Williams, “then the exact wording of the testimony is semantics.”

“The truth serum’s gonna wear off before I can talk,” I said, annoyed.

“ ‘Semantics’. This impropriety is an insult to the tradition of the Full Unveiling,” Judge Paylor scoffed. “This court cannot allow it. I object on behalf of Lysander Morris.”

“Overruled,” said Kang.

“Suck it,” I grinned, hoping it was in Morris’ general direction. I was ignored.

“At this time, the only party who can intervene on Miss Prior’s behalf is her counsel,” said Kang. “Miss McCandless, will you allow Miss Prior to discard her prepared testimony?” 

“Proceed,” said Irene.

“Really now,” said Jack.

“This was always a very real possibility,” said Irene. “Miss Prior’s mind is… unique.”

“Hell _yeah_ it is,” I said. I suddenly didn’t care much for the fact that swearing was impolite.

I could hear the smile in Irene’s voice. “We prepared the written testimony to the fullest degree of truth, so I assure you, you will find no more than the usual discrepancies. Now, please, let my client speak.”

“Miss Prior may proceed,” said Kang.

“Thank you,” I said.

I stared at the little red light for a long time. 

“This is me,” I said. “This is a story about family. This is a testimony for everyone in this room. This is the truth about Candor. This is a tale of a whole city.”

Which one of us would blink first?

“When I was writing my testimony, those were the openings I went through. I never knew how to start it. So that’s why I’m not starting with any of them; take them all, and take them how you will. The point is, when I say I’m Divergent, some of you will know what that means—I can lie under the truth serum. Dunno how it’s done. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve been told I can do it. It discolors my ethos, I know. So I understand if none of you want to trust me. But I’m not interested in hiding the truth anymore. I’m giving you all of it, all of the forms and phases, and maybe it’ll be nonsensical, indecent, whatever. I don’t care if you like it.”

I inhaled.

“All I ask is that you believe it.”

* * *

“You guys know most of the story. Aletheia told it. Last Friday, I found her in our apartment, mourning the death of her ex-boyfriend, Al, a transfer to Dauntless. I took her to the Institute roof, helped her disguise herself as a Dauntless, and led her through the train system to the Dauntless compound. It was a crime. I did a few more while I was there. Those aren’t important right now.

The important thing is—if you go back far enough—it’s not my fault. It’s yours.

Six weeks and one day ago, I took my aptitude test under the proctoring of Irene McCandless, my legal counsel. The day before, Jack Kang approached Irene about a possible conflict of interest—my mother, Natalie McCandless Prior, was Irene’s twin sister. Mr. Kang was concerned that this would prove too close of an attachment for Irene to run the tests fairly. Irene dismissed the concern and administered the test of my brother, Caleb, as well as mine.

Here’s the thing about aptitude proctors. As you know, the board consists of eight Abnegation and two Candor. The Chair of Reviews, the person who reviews all test abnormalities, is traditionally the Executive Director of Candor’s Academic Integrity Department—that’s Irene. The reason for this is checks and balances. While Abnegation handles all administrative duties involved with population and allocation of resources, full control of the aptitude test results is a massive power. So, as long as this system has continued, the power has been split between the Abnegation and the Candor. If every Candor swears to full honesty—our founders reasoned, at least—Candor should take a greater responsibility over the result records. What the Abnegation do with the results may be compared to our records, which are perfect, thus limiting Abnegation’s capacity for misuse.

Aptitude proctors are to follow four criteria for an abnormality: failure to comply, full or partial awareness, passing multiple stages, and-slash-or manipulation of the elements. The abnormalities are first recorded by the computer, then verified by the proctor, and finally submitted to Irene for analysis. If Irene catches any sign of tampering or inconsistency in the reports, she investigates the case and reports to Erudite’s Bureau of Academic Achievement.

Without going into too much detail, I fulfilled all of the abnormalities. And then Irene...didn’t report it. She left the room, deleted the results from the mainframe and inserted a line of mistake code in their place, and told me that I had received an Abnegation result.

Do you know what it’s like? Living your whole life under something that doesn’t feel right, claiming to be something that you _know_ you’re not, waiting and waiting and waiting for the day that you will finally learn the truth—only to hear the same lies as before? Do any of you know what that’s like? God. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t take it. I waited for the proctors to leave on lunch break, picked the lock to the testing floor, and guessed the password to Irene’s computer. She caught me, walked up right behind me, and told me to open my file. It was blank. She’d erased all of the results, every last trace. Then she told me to leave, choose Abnegation, and never speak of what I saw in the test again.

That’s why I chose Candor. Because I needed the truth so bad, I was willing to bet my entire future on it.

At that point, I suppose Irene gave in. I tracked her down in her office, asked again, and she told me. I’m Divergent with aptitudes for all five factions. Though I doubt it, because being self-aware in the simulation probably allowed me to cheat a little; I don’t think I’m actually naturally inclined towards _all five virtues._ Virtues are very, very hard for me to do. The point is, those were the true results of my test, and Irene told me that I couldn’t tell a soul because they’d kill me. Who, I didn’t know. They. The ambiguous They. Even still, I don’t know, some Candor, some Erudite—God—some Abnegation, maybe, They’re everywhere. Maybe some of you know, all you out there in the crowds, ogling me right now; would you lie if I asked you what names you knew? Would you?

 _God._ I didn’t know who to trust. Sometimes, I still don’t. What kind of system did I live in, I wondered, that punished people for coming forward with their true selves. And really, to think that it was a system created and maintained by the people I called my family.

It was Ace who made me realize it—Ace of Dauntless, some of you know her by another, less important name, Abigail Eaton. Please, don’t talk. I’m not supposed to say all this here, since it’s an... ongoing legal wrestling ground right now, so some things are confidential...but it’ll come out eventually, right. Ace ran away from Abnegation at age thirteen and hid in the projects. She said she was factionless, some orphan kid abused by her single parent. Not a total lie there. Then she took the literacy tests, passed, and chose Dauntless, where she passed at the top of her initiate class. Now she works in Candor as the Institute’s head of security. That’s how I met her. That’s how she saved my life.

I’ve heard a lot of questions about the thing I used to be most famous for, the Beauregard case. Now, my most famous thing is the fact that I’m on trial for crimes and misdemeanors, but for a while, times were simpler. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, because they weren’t simple at all, but since I can’t exaggerate on truth serum, maybe you can draw a conclusion about how _not_ simple things are right now.

But this is the Beauregard case. As simple as it gets.

Thomas Beauregard is the chair of Erudite’s Low-Income Education Board. Twelve years ago, he raped and molested a child named Lady Rose. Beauregard promised her that if she kept silent, he would allow her to pass the literacy exams and take the aptitude test. She was desperate, so she accepted. Beauregard continued to sexually assault her for four years, keeping her as a slave in his house and even having her sterilized when she went through puberty. Then, when the literacy exams came up, Lady Rose failed. 

She appealed the exams with the Erudite and Candor, but Beauregard destroyed all evidence of the assaults and the Candor found that no formal contract had been made, so they did not intervene. Of course, the real reason that law enforcement didn’t get involved was because of two things: a wire transfer from Thomas Beauregard to the former director of Academic Integrity, Janice Paltrowski, for twenty thousand credits, and a quiet meeting between Beauregard, Paltrowski, and Abnegation leader Marcus Eaton. Paltrowski brought a copy of _Morrick v. Erudite,_ Beauregard brought blackmail material, and Eaton agreed to drop the appeal. Lady Rose returned to the projects, where she was forced into the brothels.

Four weeks ago, Beauregard returned home late to find that his house had been broken into and a single object, his Choosing Ceremony knife, was stolen. He had a suspicion as to who the thief could be, but when he called the authorities, he claimed not to know. Under the impression that this was only a robbery, the Candor and Dauntless did a quick sweep of the house, found nothing, couldn’t figure out how the thief left the house, and passed it to the Institute, where Judge Lysander Morris decided to use it as an activity for the initiate class. We were to investigate the house and search for clues, even though they were confident that we couldn’t find anything new.

I found something. I realized that there had to be an attic space in the home, since Erudite buildings tend to be symmetrical. When I entered the attic, I was attacked. Lady Rose had broken into the house and stolen the knife, and when Beauregard called for help, she hid in the attic until the authorities left. Or at least, until we found her. She grabbed me, put the knife to my chest, and tried to kill me. Ace shot her. Saved my life.

And this isn’t a theory. This is what happened. After the fact, Beauregard was put under truth serum. He admitted to everything. It’s on record. Legal action was frozen by executive orders from Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. That’s on record, too. For some reason, none of you are talking about it.

That’s what made me realize. All of that, all that happened, but why? Because of me? Because of Ace? Because of Lady Rose? Who killed her? If she was from the factions, there’d be hearing after hearing, trying to figure out who was most responsible for her death, pinning blame here and there. But no. The answer is that she killed herself. She planned to murder a man and she assaulted me. I was doing what my teacher told me, and Ace was doing her job. It’s Lady Rose, she’s the one who’s not doing what she’s supposed to; she broke the rules, so she deserved to die. Asking for it.

It’s a guiltless answer, really; it doesn’t call for change on our parts, it doesn’t call for justice or retribution.

Is that an answer? Is it? What are we calling answers nowadays—when we ask for answers, are we asking for the truth, or are we asking for what lets you sleep at night?

This is the truth. This is _all_ of the truth. A factionless child grew up never knowing the comfort of a name, the kiss of a mother, the safety of a roof over her head. She turns to the project schools, fully believing the faction-created soundbite that ‘ _even the factionless children can join the factions, if they try hard enough’._ A pedophile—educated by the Erudite, screened by the Candor, and approved by the Abnegation—targets the girl, victimizes her, and coerces her into silence with a promise he fully intends to never uphold. Then the Erudite destroy facts. The Candor accept a bribe. The Abnegation disregard a human being in favor of a court case.

The factionless girl is trapped. Her education won’t get her anywhere. It’s too much. It’s unfair. It’s injustice. She thinks about the man who put her in his rightful prison, the prison of poverty, shame, disgust. She thinks about how he could lie his way out of what he deserves, and that even those who know the truth fail to act on it. She can’t forget. She wants no one to forget. If she can’t have her rapist, she has to make him know what he’s done. She takes a child of Abnegation. Someone who’s cradled in the same privilege, the same genre of soundbites and platitudes, the same idea that victims only get what they ask for.

And she’s shot and killed by a second child of Abnegation—one who ran from the factions, but came limping back.

Maybe that’s the simplest answer. Ace killed Lady Rose. Because Abigail Eaton is, really, the poster child of compliance, and I know because we talked about it before I turned myself in. I think about her a lot. I’m in love with her. But she puzzles me. Puzzles herself, too. In her home, under Marcus, she…she went through a lot. I don’t know if it’s my place to tell it. She told me it was fine if I did. But I think she was lying.

What I can say is that the factions hurt her, beyond justification, beyond forgiveness. But she still tried to give them a second chance. The argument to be made there is that it makes her someone to look up to—maybe the factionless will look at her example and stop complaining because they’ll realize that it really is their fault for being poor. But you’re wrong. No, it’s an insult. When Ace came back to the factions, it didn’t make her happier at all. It made her miserable. Dauntless didn’t accept her, that’s why she came to Candor, and she’s still lost, she’s still torn. You gave her a badge and a gun, told her that using them would make her happy, and then praised her when she killed one of her own.

Is she happier? When she plays along, does she ever win? How is she different from the rest of us?

This is what Ace’s presence asked me. Irene told me to play the game, to keep my head down, to learn to lie under the truth serum. That’s what all this was supposed to be, a lie about being the perfect transfer. It’s not anymore because something changed.

I found the answer. And it’s no.

You gave me this truth serum because you want to know what makes me tick, so this is it. I’m fucking _furious._ I’m angry because I realized that we’re all at fault. Every one of us, we killed Lady Rose, and we’re not sorry. The truth we claim to speak is nothing but the delusion, the _deception_ that this system is for our own good.

It’s Amity’s fault—from the moment we’re born, we’re whispered these platitudes of peace, harmony, prosperity; the factions are the best way to make everyone happy.

It’s Erudite’s fault—we’re taught a meritocracy, that we only deserve what we can work hard for, and that the people who work hard but don’t pass aren’t worthy of respect.

It’s Dauntless’ fault—everyone’s an enemy, there are good citizens and there are risk factors, there are threats around us and below us but never within.

It’s Abnegation’s fault—we’re doing good things, really, we submit to the system because it’s what’s best for everyone.

And, god, it’s Candor’s fault—how we could know all of this and see it all inside of us, that this is wrong, that the factions don’t do anything but divide and pit us against each other, that it’s not justice, there’s no way that we can be aware of this truth and not be horrified except if we’re _all lying to ourselves._

I’m furious. That’s all I have to say to you. I was furious, and I was trying to untangle why, so I started looking around. I hung a bisexual pride flag in my room and strung up notes and newspaper clippings underneath it. Tried to figure out what was wrong with us from the inside. The answer walked right into me, a girl named Sajida Touma, who transferred to Abnegation to find out what happened to Abigail Eaton. She found it, by the way, that’s why she failed, but I didn’t know it then. All I knew was that things were changing, and I had to be ready.

This is the part you know most about. I gave a testimony to Dauntless. But it’s not all correct. I asked Ace to take me to Dauntless, but I didn’t know she was Abigail. I couldn’t blackmail her. She said yes, because... I think she saw a bit of herself in me. I don’t know. You’d have to ask her why she did it. I like to think it’s because she liked me back, or maybe she sensed that I liked her, but I still don’t know. It’s all assuming. The point is, yes, I lied about blackmailing her, but that was it. I didn’t want to get her in trouble until you could hear the whole story. Though how much good it’ll do her, I don’t know.

The rest is pretty much true. I’m so stoned right now, I can’t remember what parts were lies, mostly all that minor stuff about Ace and the people who helped me. Which wouldn’t be my testimony to give, anyway. And let’s be honest. Details about my misdemeanor trespassing charge are probably not the biggest thing to hold me responsible for. 

Here’s the thing I didn’t say and I never lied about. I went to Dauntless, trained there, and took on the identity of one because, yes, I was angry. I wanted to know what it’s like on another side. Heh, three factions down, two left to go. And maybe I also just wanted to hold Ace’s hand, do all those things that sappy couples should be able to do in public—which we couldn’t do here because it’s illegal, or back in Abnegation because it’s obscene and selfish. I wanted to live! I wanted to know what it’s like to not feel tethered somewhere. Or what it’s like to see family wherever you go, not enemies.

I don’t know the science behind aptitude—maybe there _is_ something in our brains that makes us naturally inclined towards one virtue over another, maybe there isn’t. But, god, for the first time in my life, it’s clicked.

Look around you.

There are kind people here; there are smart and selfless people; there are brave people. Despite being in the most ruthless, loveless faction of them all. Despite—despite Candor aptitude being the end of the line, the aptitude you get when you fail all the others, or when you cheat the test without knowing it. Despite only making the choice because you don’t know who you are.

Despite everything, you’re these things because you’ve chosen to be.

And I went to Dauntless because I realized this, that the factions are lines to divide the colors in a spectrum. 

If you do care about truth—if you’ve thought at all about the black and white that you wear—you’d know. You can’t ignore four virtues and expect to preserve the integrity of the fifth.

Listen to the streets.

There is injustice all around you, all beneath you.

And all you can think about are these arbitrary lines and fighting like children on the playground and arguing over whose team is better. This division—these stereotypes, these little tantrums and power grabs—

How dare you insist that those are your biggest problems? How dare you reject those who can’t prune themselves into the right shape, then pretend that you’re not just like them? And how dare you lie to me, how dare you lie to the whole city, telling us that our system is as fair as it could ever get?

How dare you?

I’m speaking to you right now, and I shouldn’t be. You’re supposed to be the adults, and you’re supposed to see these things happening and speak on them. I should be confessing my nonexistent sex life or the time I got blackout drunk after my final exam. Hey, I’m in love with a Dauntless woman, hah, that should be my biggest scandal, I should be in pieces about that. But I’m not. I’m trying to defend my right to live, two hundred thousand people’s rights to live, I’m betraying you and my family in Abnegation because—because you’ve given me no choice. You want the truth? You have it. All of it, in all its forms, and maybe, at some point, I’ve doubted about whether I care if you like it, I’ve been so fucking afraid to say it, but this is all I have left to say—if I’m guilty, it’s not because of what lies I’ve told. It’s not because of what lies Irene has told, and it’s not because of what lies Ace has told.

It’s about you, and it’s about if you decide that you’d rather look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never— _never—_ lied to yourself or to the people around you about what’s really going on in the city right now.

About the fact that you know this system is bullshit and you’re too scared to call it out.

About who you really are.

If I’m guilty, it’s because of the lies _you_ told.”

* * *

“Mom.

I love you.”

* * *

I fell silent.

For what felt like hours, there was no sound. I heard no movement beyond the one-way mirrors. Maybe I was dead; maybe the afterlife was sitting alone in the quiet where you took your last breath. I touched my palms together. I could feel them, my slow pulse in my wrists, under the Amity tree and the Dauntless flames. Unusually slow. Then, as I waited, the pulse began to quicken. I sighed. The serum was wearing off. 

“Miss Prior. Is there anything more you wish to say?”

It was Kang’s voice. I felt like I hadn’t heard another human voice for years. 

“Not right now,” I said, my voice hoarse. I rubbed my cheek. “My jaw’s too sore.”

There was another pause, then Jack said, “Thank you for your candor.”

Some of the crowd said, “Thank you for your candor.” It couldn’t be more than half. It was the quietest Candor chorus ever sung.

The mirrors slid down. I approached the bench, looking only at Kang’s indifferent expression. I was too afraid to meet any of the other judges’ eyes until Irene stood and came to my side. Even then, I couldn’t manage more than wary side-glances. Their faces were just as indifferent, unreadable.

“What—on _earth—_ was that?” asked Kang.

“My eulogy,” I said. “Since nobody’ll do it when I’m found dead in the canal.”

“Phoebe,” Irene warned. “Your Honor, I apologize on my client’s behalf. As you know, the side effects of truth serum can last as long as—”

“Let her speak,” said Kang.

“Miss Prior,” said Judge McDougall, one of the elderly white women. She leaned forward, hand under her chin. “Why are you so certain that you will be found, quote, ‘dead in the canal’?”

I looked at Irene, who nodded hesitantly.

“According to Executive Director Irene McCandless,” I replied, “any person suspected of Divergence—by witnesses or by proctors—must be reported to Academic Integrity. They investigate and forward confirmed suspects the Erudite Bureau of Academic Achievement. Not all of the suspects end up dead. But there’s an unusual correlation between being reported and being found dead from food poisoning, overdose, or suicide. About fifty-two percent of all suspects, actually.”

 “This is nonsense!” Judge Paylor sniffed. “To suggest that Candor allows such—underhanded _savagery—_ ”

“We do,” said Irene. “I’m the one you assigned to allow it. Candor’s presence on the Aptitude Committee was always strategic—Erudite would never trust Abnegation to report the suspects, but they trust us.”

“I’m not listening to this,” said Paylor. “You’re a liar.”

“But she’s not lying about this,” said McDougall.

“Miss McCandless,” said Judge Williams softly. “Do you mean to suggest that Erudite is using Academic Integrity’s information to...target citizens?”

“I do.”

“Can you provide any proof?”

“I can,” said Judge Coulter-Moore. Until then, she had been mostly silent. Now she folded her hands. “Before McCandless and Paltrowski, I ran Academic Integrity. It’s all true.”

“Leslie?” whispered McDougall.

“It’s all very legal, as well,” Coulter-Moore continued. “We’re not well-known for it, but it’s a codified responsibility—Article 14, Section 7, _Candor Code of Governance._ ”

“Article 14 is only intended to regulate inter-faction departmental relationships,” Paylor snapped. “The code never approves of these—baseless claims about Erudite _murdering_ citizens without due process of law. No proof exists that such cruelty has ever happened. Miss Prior and Miss McCandless are out of line, using conspiracy theories to defend their blatant lies, and I refuse to stand for it. Judge Coulter-Moore, you would be wise to consider your own seat.”

Coulter-Moore did not respond. Judge Williams looked at her and Paylor for a very long time before sighing.

“Miss Prior,” said Williams. “Do you know why people lie?”

“Because they’re afraid,” I said.

“What were you afraid of?”

“Dying.”

“Do you believe this is a justifiable reason to lie?”

I looked her in the eye. “Do you?”

She said nothing.

The question hung in the air. Heavy. Unanswered. I wished, for a moment, that I could open my mouth again, to take what might be my last opportunity to speak to the crowd. But the words had all come out, and something deep inside me told me to wait. It was time to listen.

In the back of the room, a tall black man stood up. My Arguments professor, Judge Bandele, clasped his hands in front of him.

“I did,” he said.

The room began to murmur again. A young man, maybe his son, touched his arm and hissed something. But Bandele stayed standing.

Then a woman stood. Her elderly mother joined her, at her side. Around the room, people stood, one after another. It wasn’t many. A hundred, maybe; two hundred scattered. Faces I knew. Faces I didn’t. All of Candor’s Divergent—at least, all of those who were honest enough to stand.

The security woman from the front entrance.

One of the bailiffs.

The priest from the church.

Amalka.

Brighton.

After a long, long time, Judge Williams stood.

Irene stepped forward and reached up to her glasses. Slowly, she pulled them off and dropped them to her side. She tilted her face to the glass skylight. A late sunbeam touched her cheek. Her unfocused brown eyes darted, here and there, without rhyme or reason, vulnerable and frightened of a future they could not see. But she let all of Candor look.

“Justices,” she said. “Miss Prior isn’t calling for violence. Only change. You wanted to know her thoughts, and you heard them. If you show her mercy, all we ask is for the court to grant the proper platform to make that change—due process, protection from Erudite, and a fair trial as a member of Candor.

“If you cannot grant this, fine. Give Miss Prior’s case to Erudite. But before you do, look around. If you dismiss Miss Prior’s request on the basis that she lied to you, then take the names of whoever else is standing right now. Starting with mine.”

I looked up. I expected to see some people sit down, but not one person did. A couple more stood.

At the far back of the room, Judge Morris stood, but then ducked out of the door. I wondered where he was going.

The clerk stood, too, but only to rush over to Jack Kang and whisper something in his ear. He thought, then nodded. She rushed back to her microphone.

“Justices,” said the clerk, her voice trembling, “do you grant Phoebe Beatrice Prior membership into Candor?”

“I vote nay!” Paylor snapped. “We cannot make this vote!”

“I…agree,” said Coulter-Moore slowly. “Our court is not equipped to form such precedent. Nay.”

“We cannot grant her protected due process without membership,” said McDougall.

Paylor slammed his hand on the podium. “Then let the Erudite take her—”

“Aye,” said McDougall. “I vote in favor of membership.” 

“Clearly,” said Williams, still standing, “I also vote aye.”

Everyone looked to the center seat. My hand found Irene’s and clasped tight.

For the longest time, it was like the room was only me and Kang. He didn’t blink much. _Please,_ I wanted to tell him. _I know I lied, disobeyed, and broke the law. I don’t deserve justice. But...please. If you care about the people you swore to protect—_

“Aye,” said Kang.

“The court grants Miss Prior membership into Candor,” said the clerk. 

My hands went over my mouth, and the room exploded.

I don’t remember what happened next. The bailiff, the one who had stood as Divergent, draped the black robe, white sash, and silver cord over my shoulders. She was smiling. Irene was in such shock that she dropped her cane, but when she picked it up again, she dropped it again when I hugged her. There was chattering and screaming and everything was in an uproar, a blend of angry shouts but then—like music—cheering.

Kang tried to get the room in order again, but ultimately failed. Bailiffs swarmed around me, and within seconds Irene and I were being bundled out of the Grand Courtroom. They took me to a private bathroom and Irene gave me my bag. She had returned her glasses to their rightful home on her nose. 

“Get dressed and wait in there,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about. They’re doing the closing ceremony right now, escorting out most of the spectators, and then you’ll be allowed to rejoin your class. If we let you do the closing ceremony, there might be a mob.”

Oh. Honestly, understandable. I nodded, closed the door, and turned the lock.

It might have been a few minutes or an hour before I heard the knock again; I wasn’t sure. I had spent most of it sitting naked on the toilet, my head in my hands. I was reeling. What I had just done—it hadn’t registered. I suspected it wouldn’t for a very long time. I exchanged my graduation robe and modesty cloth for the black trousers, shirt, and capelet, taking extra care to pin the silver scales and chain just right. After a few minutes, staring at myself in the mirror, I rolled up my sleeves to expose the tattoos.

I had done it. I was Candor. I was Divergent. I had told the truth. 

Then the knock came. I stepped out into an empty, quiet hallway. As we passed a window, I saw crowds in the plaza below the Merciless Mart—all of Candor filing onto a line of buses. There seemed to be some sort of commotion, with some of the Candor overflowing into the streets and blocking traffic, but it didn’t seem too unusual. Candor were notoriously bad-tempered drivers.

The last people left in the Merciless Mart was a special group in the south lobby. All of my classmates had changed out of their uniforms and into their finest clothes. Some still wore their graduation robes over their shoulders. In the case of the Candor-born, their families flocked around them, chattering wildly, before leaving with the other adults. Oona hugged her father and then sat with Sherlock. Older law students hung behind to keep the former initiates company.

“They’re going to Antigone’s,” said Irene. “Old tradition.”

“Can you come with me?” I asked quietly.

She squeezed my hand. “Of course.”

In the group, two sunny-haired kids waved to me. Amalka and Brighton. As the group began to move to the door, I grinned back and tugged Irene’s hand to catch up to the brother and sister.

Things were changing. That was okay. My old friends were gone, but I could make new ones. The family that raised me...in their own ways, they had let me go, and I had let them go in turn. We could still move forward.

I stepped out of the Merciless Mart for the first time as a true Candor. I breathed in the pleasant summer air and smiled—certain, for once, that I would be alright.

Then I was shot in the ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end credits play
> 
> just kidding there's like 6 more chapters


	41. Entr'acte

For as long as anyone could remember, Candor’s Full Unveilings were aired on TV. It is one thing to stand in front of a secluded faction and reveal your deepest secrets; it is another entirely to release them to the whole city.

Not that people normally watched them. An all-day broadcast of raunchy secrets and scandals is only interesting _in theory_. It was actually quite boring if you didn’t know the initiates. Then there was the matter that two of the five factions were staunchly against the broadcast on moral principles—Amity, most of whom didn’t own televisions, deeming them to be far less interesting than dancing in sunny meadows; and Abnegation, none of whom owned televisions, deeming them to be self-indulgent...obviously. Both factions had radios, but listening to the Full Unveilings was still discouraged. Amity found them depressing. Abnegation found them a waste of time. Neither faction was technically wrong.

Erudite’s only interest in the Full Unveilings was for research. Most of them used Candor initiates as lab rats, comparing a person’s reaction to the serum to different demographic features, diets, severity of secret, et cetera. One famous paper, however, didn’t study the Candor initiates at all. A particularly long Full Unveiling (an initiate class of fifty-eight students) was used as the triggering factor in an experiment about volunteers’ abilities to endure slow psychological torture. 

The Dauntless just liked to make fun of us. 

The factionless were technically allowed to have TVs. Technically, they were allowed to have anything they wanted; the problem lay in getting it, or, even before that, having any reason to want one. The only TV broadcasts were news reports, Candor trial proceedings, or—after midnight—Dauntless wrestling matches. As a result, the factionless didn’t often save their meager wages to buy TVs; therefore, they never watched the Full Unveilings. Until this year, when they all did.

Ace was the first person I told about my plan, right before she “turned me in” to the Dauntless police. I told her that I planned to come absolutely clean, Divergence and all. 

She asked if I understood that they would kill me. 

I said that was okay. What mattered was that my speech would reach an entire faction, and no one could shut me up without violating the philosophy of truth itself. 

Ace didn’t like it at all. But she let me, swore a vow of silence, and we left.

After I was taken back to Candor, Ace was held behind by Dauntless. The news about her true identity sent seismic-scale shockwaves throughout the whole faction—everyone wanted to know, most of all Eric Coulter. She refused to speak to him. Instead, she went straight to the head leader of Dauntless, Max, and explained her story only up until her initiation into Dauntless. She didn’t mention me once. When asked, she said, “You’ll know soon enough. It’ll be on TV.”

Ace was placed on disciplinary probation and suspended from work, which surprised nobody, but which took a toll on her. She only broke her vow of silence twice. The first time was when Irene visited Dauntless with the help of her nephew Uriah, which wasn’t really a breaking of the vow, since Irene was consulting Ace on her parts in the story. The second time was when Ace got drunk with Tori and Sajida Touma and started crying about losing me. As soon as Sajida knew, it was over.

The word spread through the projects like a new strain of hallucinogen. For the first time, an initiate was going to use the Full Unveiling to flip the factions the bird. Most of the factionless didn’t believe it, and of those who did, few of them cared. It wouldn’t change anything, they assumed. If they were lucky, they might get to watch someone get shot on live television.

But of those who believed and cared, it was enough.

* * *

I couldn’t imagine that it was a good day for Ravi. When I asked him, he said, “I’ve had worse, but not many.”

The not-nice bailiffs threw him out of the front doors of the Merciless Mart, stripped him of his keys, and shoved a pamphlet at him.

“Report to the Abnegation Grace Building next Monday,” said the least-nice one gruffly. “You can apply for your food stamp card, employment options, and housing contracts there.”

“Next Monday?” Ravi protested. “What am I going to eat until then?”

“That’s not our problem anymore,” said the slightly-nicer-but-still-not-very-nice bailiff, then slammed the doors.

For a long time, Ravi sat there in the north plaza, his robe torn and fingernails bleeding. He’d fought the bailiffs all the way down, even though there had been nothing to escape to. Except this.

He pulled at the Merciless Mart doors. They were locked. He ran across the street. The Institute was locked too. He screamed. He threw his body and fists at the glass doors, but they didn’t so much as crack. Bulletproof. 

He collapsed at Themis’ feet and cried for hours. 

There was only so much crying he could do, though, especially after fasting for so long. He needed food. He tried to break into the Institute kitchen, but he only found one paperclip and broke it while trying to pick the lock. Eventually, he subjected himself to the worst shame of all, pulling food from the garbage.

Barefoot, smelling of trash, and bundled in a dirty white robe, Ravi set out into the world.

It took him a while to find help. He found the projects—“Guess this is my home now,” he said aloud, trying to make it a joke, but then just crying—and wandered the streets, looking into windows, calling out after the elusive shadows that lurked in the alleys. Finally, he came across a ramshackle little bar, its windows boarded up, but with laughter coming from inside.

He tiptoed up to the door and cracked it open. Inside were some older men and women, clad in garments as tattered and dusty as Ravi’s robe. They were gathered around a black-and-white television. Most were drinking. Some were playing a card game.

“Hello?” said a kindly voice, and Ravi pushed open the door a little further. The bartender, a portly, silver-haired woman, was looking at him. “Oh, it’s a child… sorry, love, I know some places don’t care, but we’d really you be of age…”

Ravi stepped inside anyway. The bartender gasped, and the room went quiet. All of the factionless turned around, staring. 

In the silence, Ravi heard a voice that he knew—the voice of Leanne, giving her testimony.

“You’re that girl,” said one of the men. “The one that failed—”

“I’m not a girl,” Ravi snapped.

“Oh...shit,” said the man. “I’m sorry.”

“Beezus, really,” said one of the elders. “Our apologies, Beezus tries, but he forgets. I’m Jericho, they/them. The flower at the bar is my wife, Lola, she/her.”

“I’m Ravi,” said Ravi warily. “He/him.”

That was how Ravi made his first factionless friends. 

Lola poured him a mug of homemade beer that warmed him to the bone, and the group at the TV welcomed him in. He asked why they were watching the Full Unveilings, and most of them shrugged. One of them said that a friend had told them to put that old TV of theirs to good use, because one of the initiates was planning to say something really big, even on the realm of treasonous. Treason was always fun, they laughed. Ravi tried not to cringe at that. Then he remembered that he was homeless, and it suddenly became easier to not find such statements offensive.

Most of the customers were only partially watching the Full Unveilings. Despite some of the rumors, they didn’t actually care that much. They considered it only a reason to throw a party, since being factionless got monotonous after a while. Beezus taught Ravi how to play poker. Jericho, who left Abnegation after coming out as agender, listened as Ravi unloaded his feelings about being rejected from Erudite and Candor. Lola wrapped Ravi in a blanket and promised him that he could stay with their family as long as he needed.

As the Unveilings dragged on, more people filtered into the bar. Many of them recognized Ravi’s robe, and for a time, the room turned into a line of factionless, waiting their turns to give condolences to their newest member. By the time Oona’s testimony began, the place was packed to the roof, Lola was out of mugs, and no treason had been said in the Unveilings. 

“It has to be Phoebe,” said Ravi to the others. “She got in all sorts of trouble the week before the exams. She said she was in love with a Dauntless woman. She even had a tattoo.” But inside, Ravi wasn’t so sure. Last he remembered, I was Abnegation; I was the furthest thing from treasonous.

It didn’t make sense until I picked the locks of my handcuffs on live TV and said I was Divergent. 

It was safe to say that no one in the bar—or, for that matter, in the city—had expected what they saw. A half-naked Abnegation transfer, tattooed all over and stoned on truth serum (I have been told, by multiple accounts, that I was a little tipsier than most of my classmates, since I was the smallest. Divergence didn’t help me there, I suppose), calling out Candor and the government for crimes against humanity. It was a scene.

Just like in the Grand Courtroom, by the end of my testimony, the bar was silent. Candor stood, though they weren’t shown on camera. The judges cast their votes. I was made a member. Then I was bundled out by the bailiffs and the closing ceremonies began.

But by that point, nobody was listening. It was clear that whatever happened to me now wouldn’t be shown on screen. Slowly, Jericho reached across and turned the TV off.

“That was...something,” they said.

A murmur of assent. An undertone of fear. What would happen now? Surely, Erudite, Dauntless, and Abnegation all knew of this. The Candor broadcast hadn’t shown the Divergent who stood, but it wouldn’t matter; they’d be found anyway. The half-Dauntless police would undoubtedly return, searching for the revolutionary sects scattered around the projects. The factionless had safety in numbers, at least. There were never enough half-Dauntless to hurt more than a few. And the Candor...there were Candor on the right side now…

After a while, a few of them noticed something. Ravi still sat in front of the TV, staring at the black screen.

His face was twisted in rage.

As the rest of the factionless argued in hushed tones, Ravi looked down. His hands gripped his sleeves, already torn, and pulled them until they tore more, ripping the delicate seams. He quietly asked Lola for a knife. She gave him one, watching in worry as he began to cut up his sleeves and the longer hem from his robe. Then he tied the strips around his hands and feet, knotting them tight.

In the rags of his Full Unveiling, Ravi stood.

* * *

Around the city, the factionless stood. 

It started with the ones like Sajida, those who planned—her group had been ready for a while now, waiting for the perfect time, and Ace and I had given it. In the early morning, as nineteen Candor initiates dressed in white robes, Sajida and Judge Madullah Touma arose and draped themselves in black ones. Sajida dressed for war. The Judge dressed for court. When I spoke, they stepped into light for the first time in days, leading about a hundred factionless into the streets.

It was carried onwards by the ones like Ravi, deciding right then to act. There were an estimated three hundred televisions in the factionless projects at the time, all showing the Full Unveiling, a good number serving whole neighborhoods or a crowd like Ravi’s. Forty factionless gathered in a poor woman’s restaurant for one last round of drinks. They toasted. They shouted. Then they marched, a small part of something greater.

They came from all around, converging in the city common district. They flooded walkways and bus routes. They chanted, they lifted homemade signs, but most of them were silent, the only sound thousands of marching feet. From back doors, chefs and servers heard the thunder. From windows, housekeepers saw the surge. From basements, courtesans felt the shaking of the earth. They didn’t know why, but they knew they were witnesses to the end of the world as they knew it, and they stood. They dropped their smiles and left their customers. They took up brooms and kitchen knives. They painted roses and thorns and angels on cardboard signs. They stood.

Some didn’t stand. In a little apartment, in a locked room without electric light, Miriam sat by the window with a semi-automatic rifle and two extra boxes of ammunition. Thirty children—her own, her neighbors’, and nobody’s at all—huddled around her feet. She hadn’t been religious since she was much younger. Now, for the children, she prayed that she wouldn’t need to stand.

In the span of an hour, three thousand factionless emerged from the shadows to stand. The Full Unveiling’s closing ceremony dragged on. I waited in a bathroom, Irene and the bailiffs keeping guard.

Judge Lysander Morris drove to the Erudite compound, said what he needed to say, and drove back to his penthouse apartment. As the hour drew to a close, he took off his jacket, poured a single malt scotch, and sat on the balcony. His view overlooked the canal and the south Merciless Mart plaza. He watched the factionless parade down the street, then the ranks of Dauntless march in behind them. By the time the Merciless Mart doors opened and the Candor flooded out, the streets were empty except for a few Dauntless patrols. As the last of the Candor left and the initiates were allowed to go, a car pulled up to the plaza. Blue-clad figures stepped out. 

Morris smiled. From where he sat, twelve floors above the cleanup, the late afternoon sun pricked against the skeletal radio towers. He began to think about what to make for dinner. He would have to wait this one out, but that was alright. 

It was a nice day.


	42. Chapter 41

It was the second time in one day where I wondered if I was dead. Not a fun record to break.

The shot hit me in the left side of my chest, right at the base of my ribcage. It wasn’t really pain, which surprised me. More like a dull thud. I looked down to see a gleaming silver dart.

“Oh,” I said, right before my knees gave out.

I hit the ground, then a stair, then another stair, and...so on. Instinctively, I tried to break my fall, but a second later, whatever was in the dart kicked in. A giant hand picked me up and doused me into ice water. I could move. Not well. It knocked the wind out of me. I rolled to a stop on the pavement, my ear pressed to the marble, my hair falling over my eyes. 

My heart pounded—though it was struggling. Then it slowed. It seemed to want to go slower before picking up again and settling to normal. Strange, because I was still terrified. Voices were screaming. Through my hair, I saw the running shoes of a panic. Instinct told me to panic and run too. I had been shot by some sort of tranquilizer dart, but it wasn’t working as it should. Divergent immunity. Of course. 

I had to stay still. Maybe if I played dead (or paralyzed), I could gather more information before making a move. Irene yelled my name, then a string of curses. Heavy boots shook the ground around my head. Dauntless. The steps pounded in perfect time, perfect formation, too perfect for Dauntless. A second later, the rhythmic pounding was broken by sharp heels.

Through the red curls, I caught a flash of blue satin toes.

“Fascinating,” said Jeanine. 

A hand brushed at the back of my head and I tried to keep from flinching. Cold, clammy fingers slipped under my collar, pressing against my neck.

“I was certain we’d have to shoot her again; this formula always provided mixed results...pulse unusually fast, though. Irene, didn’t you report an unusual pulse in her aptitude simulation?”

“She has anxiety,” said Irene, her voice low.

“Not a Divergent thing?”

Irene didn’t respond.

“Well.” Jeanine pulled her hand away. Her jacket rustled as she stood. “It’s been hypothesized that Divergence is comorbid with certain developmental disabilities… autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit, as well as anxiety. Perhaps we should look more into it.”

“Get to the point, Jeanine,” Irene snapped.

“Erudite is taking custody of Beatrice Prior.” Metal clinked against metal, and the Dauntless moved. I shut my eyes, fearing they would come for me, but it was worse. “Irene McCandless, you are under arrest for charges of conspiracy and premeditated treasonous acts. You know the law and your rights…though after today, I’m beginning to doubt that.”

“Hey! You can’t do that!” shouted Brighton.

“Arresting people is Candor’s job,” Aletheia said. “This is false arrest and imprisonment. She can sue you to hell, you know.”

“Actually, no.”

The voice was Oona’s. The arguing subsided. A hollow pit was forming in my gut, and it wasn’t only because of the hunger.

“Dauntless has original jurisdiction over trespassing on their property. They should have tried Phoebe, but they allowed Candor to do it first. Legally...they can void that agreement if new evidence is found.”

“But you can’t arrest me,” Irene protested.

“I think Phoebe’s testimony is enough to charge you with aiding and abetting,” said Jeanine.

Oh God. This was the last thing I needed—for the testimony to cause a legal trainwreck. Well, we did want a legal trainwreck, but it wasn’t supposed to be quite yet. There were supposed to be less Erudite involved.

“As for my presence,” continued Jeanine, “Dauntless leader Eric and your own Judge Lysander Morris asked me to come along. As you might figure, Erudite has a special interest in people who accuse the whole faction of murder and torture. Thank you, Oona.”

I bit my tongue at Morris’ name, but it was at Oona’s that it drew blood. Jeanine knew Oona. It all made sense now—Jeanine knew Morris, and Morris liked Oona, so he made her my prison warden.

The smile was audible in Jeanine’s voice. “So...if nobody else is going to tell me how to do my duty to the city…I think you should all return to your dormitories.”

“What about Antigone’s?” asked Leanne.

“First you take our friend, and now you’re taking our drinks?” Brighton demanded. 

“The common district is closed. The city is on level 2 lockdown. You, older girl, take them. Oona, Sherlock, you two stay.”

She must have been talking to Amalka, because as the feet of my classmates begrudgingly passed by me, I heard her whisper, “I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

“What about us?” asked Sherlock.

“You’re not in trouble,” said Jeanine. “Your classmate’s... _incendiary_ little speech disturbed much of the city. Factionless criminals have begun to riot in the common, and many people are frightened. But we in Erudite and Dauntless, as you know, have lost our credibility. We need an impartial voice to reverse the damage that Beatrice did, speak to the city in a broadcast, and assure them that all is under control. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” said Oona immediately.

“Yes,” echoed Sherlock, a little more hesitantly. 

“Thank you. You can follow me. Liza, you have the judge’s list; round up the Divergent and report back to me. Eric, take those two disgraces back to Dauntless.”

“Yes, Jeanine,” said a woman’s voice.

“With pleasure,” said a man’s voice.

Jeanine, Oona, and Sherlock left, but I didn’t see where to. Suddenly, two brawny arms wrapped around my waist and slung my body in the air, so fast that I didn’t even have time to gasp. I was dropped over someone’s shoulder, bent at the waist with my face in the back of a black combat vest. Then the person carrying me began to walk. The heavy boots moved in time with all the others. 

My head was spinning. I couldn’t see much while pretending to be sedated, only flashes of color and light, but something was so, so wrong. I saw Dauntless black, but not the Dauntless spirit. When did Dauntless walk in perfect time? When was a whole plaza of Dauntless silent as a tomb? 

With the jostling of my captor’s steps, I managed to pull of a natural-looking turn of my head. To my left was a white suit. Irene walked next to me, hands cuffed in front of her, one arm held by a Dauntless man. Their faces stared forward, unblinking, their mouths half-open, awake without being alive. They were sleepwalkers. To my right, Eric was talking to another Dauntless woman. Neither of their gaits matched the soldiers who held me and Irene.

Marching at our rear was a single soldier. I almost didn’t give her a second glance. Then, out of chance, my peripheral vision caught it—a flame-red scar streaking down her cheek.

Ace.

As blank-faced as the rest of them. She didn’t even meet my eyes. She held a large gun to her chest, but it was wrong. A right-handed grip. Ace wasn’t left-handed, but she didn’t use her right hand to aim a gun, because the vision in her right eye was impaired.

If I hadn’t overheard Caleb talking to Eric, or if Jeanine hadn’t cornered me and asked me about my experience with the simulation serum, or if I had never read about Judge Touma’s infiltration of Erudite, it would be a stretch. But now the pieces all fell into place. Erudite’s delivery to Dauntless was supposed to be two thousand individual doses, _“enough to drug up a whole damn faction”._ Dauntless serums didn’t use electrodes, only a remote transmitter injected in the neck, but they were the same thing as the aptitude simulation. Data collected about aptitude could be used to develop Dauntless serums. And according to the news reports, Touma had been in Jeanine’s office, searching for information about Lady Rose and the Angel Girls—but why would she need that when all of that information should have been in Candor? 

This was what Touma was chasing. Something that I had been so blind to miss. The Erudite were controlling the Dauntless through a serum, a whole mindless army, to do…

A chill ran down my spine. Whatever they were doing, it would end in tragedy. 

Eric and the other conscious Dauntless leader weren’t looking at me, so I risked a longer look at Ace. Was I wrong? Was _she_ wrong? Was she not Divergent? Tears sparked behind my eyes, and I blinked them back as I slowly dropped my head again. All I could do was stare at her boots. 

When we all stopped in an alley, Ace’s heels locked together, at perfect attention. And then something peculiar happened: keeping her weight evenly on her heels, her hips and shoulders perfectly still, Ace lifted her left toe and tapped it a half-inch in the air.

The last of the sedative rushed from my body. I wanted to hug her. She was awake. I was right, and we’d be alright.

Behind me, a door opened, and Irene made a noise of disgust as her soldier shoved her out of my sight. A second later, my soldier lifted me off his shoulder and dropped me clumsily on a hard metal floor. I kept my eyes mostly closed, but I knew had landed in the opening of a military truck, facing the outside. Someone’s backside was in my face, Eric’s.

“Ready to go?” asked Eric.

“Another minute,” said a woman that I couldn’t see. “Damn factionless; they didn’t just slash the tires, smashed in the hubcaps too. Wait here with the prisoners until Lockwood’s done.”

Eric grumbled, but not for long. Something else seemed to catch his attention.

“I can’t get over this,” he said, stepping toward Ace. At least his backside wasn’t pressed up against my face. My eyes caught on the holstered pistol on his hip, within my reach. Eric poked Ace’s scarred cheek. She didn’t even flinch.

“They really can’t see us? Or hear us?” the woman asked.

“Oh, they can see and hear. But they’re not processing any of it,” said Eric. “Our network sends a command, the transmitter receives it…” His fingers trailed down and pressed his fingers against a spot in Ace’s neck. I wanted to strangle him. “...and they do as they’re told.”

A low, wicked chuckle bubbled from Eric’s throat.

“What a sight to see. The legendary Ace, finally doing what she’s told. It’s too good. No one’s going to remember that I came in second now, are they? Second to a factionless—pardon me—a _Stiff?_ No one’s going to ask, ‘What was it like to train with the first hobo Dauntless? The missing _Abigail Eaton?’_ Give me a fucking break.”

Growling, he reached into his jacket and whipped out a knife. Ace didn’t so much as flinch. 

“It’d be so easy,” he snarled. “Just say that a factionless stabbed her to death, no one would be the wiser.”

“Go ahead,” the woman said, sounding bored. “She’s nothing now.”

Without drawing blood, Eric lay the flat of his knife against Ace’s scar, pulling it slowly down her cheek. Behind me, Irene let out a choked sob.

“Let’s finish what we started, shall we?” whispered Eric.

My lungs burned. I hadn’t breathed in almost a minute. I saw Ace’s finger twitch against the trigger of her gun, but I was already on the move, my hand snapping across the space between me and Eric. I grabbed his pistol, scrambled to my knees, and aimed at his head. Right between his eyes when he turned.

“Touch her and—and you’re dead,” I stammered.

Eric seemed surprised for only a second. Then he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. I’ve seen you shoot.”

“I don’t need to hit you,” I said. “Just distract you.”

Ace drove her boot into the back of his knees, then her gun into his head. Eric crumpled.

Immediately, the two other Dauntless snapped into action, raising their guns mechanically. Ace was faster. She ducked, sweeping her legs behind one man’s heels and sending him to the ground. When the second came for her, she fired a shot into his hip, and when the first scrambled up, another single shot into his shoulder. The two men spasmed, still trying to obey the orders in their heads. But Ace kicked their guns aside, and the pain seemed too much for even the serum to override, so they fell limp and gasping on the ground.

The conscious Dauntless woman ran towards us, but Ace didn’t give her mercy. Two shots. Heart and head. 

Eric was at the ground in front of me. Unconscious. Ace pushed one boot into his back and leaned forward, hand outstretched to me. 

“My hero,” she smiled.

Still trembling from adrenaline, I took her hand and stepped over Eric. I tried to give Ace the gun, but she gently nudged it back. “Keep it.”

“I still don’t know how to aim it.”

“Presumably, you can try using your eyes,” supplied Irene. “Will you stop flirting and help me?”

I found the key in Eric’s belt, unlocked Irene’s cuffs, and gave her back her silver cane. When we ran around to the front of the truck, we were almost hit by a flying Erudite mechanic, whose transmitter Ace was crushing under her heel. After tumbling to the ground, the mechanic shrieked and ran from the alley.

“Get in,” called Ace.

I started helping Irene into the passenger’s side before climbing in after her. “What about Eric?”

“You didn’t kill him?” asked Irene, sounding disappointed.

“No.” Ace frowned. “Should I have?”

“We’re not killing anyone else,” I said. I knew the Dauntless woman might not have deserved mercy. But my stomach still clenched at the memory of gunfire. “Ace, Irene, please.”

Ace grumbled, but she finally got into the driver’s side. “Fine.”

We sped off. 

“They gave us the injections last night, after Dauntless initiation,” said Ace as she drove. We turned onto the street near the Merciless Mart plaza, but the windows were tinted and none of the patrolling soldiers could see us in the front seat. I knew that the anonymity wouldn’t last for long, however; Eric would soon wake up or the two injured soldiers would be found. “Said they were to track us if we went missing, some drivel like that. But I couldn’t refuse without looking suspicious, and thanks to you, I’m plenty of that.”

“You’re welcome,” I said sarcastically.

“Psh. Honestly, though...the testimony was awesome,” she added. “Managed to watch a bit before they turned the transmitters on.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’re cute when you’re mad at the establishment.”

“I am going to kiss you _so_ much.”

“You’re both disgusting,” said Irene.

“The transmitters are being controlled from a station in the Hub,” Ace continued. “This morning, Jeanine told Eric to report there. Why there and not Erudite, I don’t know.”

I frowned. “But the Hub’s closed today. Abnegation initiation should be tonight. There’s the short ceremony, a social and a potluck. The whole faction is there.”

“That’s what I thought too,” said Ace. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sociopaths with robot soldiers could easily convince them to cancel a potluck,” Irene said dryly.

“Did Sajida know anything about that?” I asked.

Ace pressed her lips together. “I don’t know.”

“Jeanine said the factionless are rioting in the common district. Maybe they do know.”

“Not rioting,” said Irene. “Marching. The factions have known for quite a long time that the factionless were planning a protest; they just needed an extra push. The plan was always this: wait for the right time, send no more than one hundred unarmed protesters to the common district plaza, and refuse to leave.”

As we drew closer to the common district, the sidewalks became dense with marching Dauntless. We joined a line of other military trucks, creeping along the center of the streets. In the distance, there was a roar of voices. Thousands. 

“What’s going on?” Irene asked.

“There’s a holdup somewhere ahead,” said Ace, squinting. Finally, she grew impatient and turned the truck down an alley and a side street, knocking over a few trash cans, veering so sharply around the corners that my face hit the window glass. “Probably just some Amity and Candor. What a great day for Erudite’s riot control experiment, the day where every single faction goes to the common to celebrate—”

Only the front half of the truck had emerged from the side street when Ace slammed on the brakes.

“Oh god,” said Ace.

“Irene?” I whispered.

“I’m here.”

“You said there were only one hundred protesters.”

The inside of the truck was quiet for a very long time.

“Oh no,” said Irene.

Before us was a war zone. It wasn’t the common district plaza—that was two blocks away. This, it seemed, was the overflow. Hundreds of factionless and Dauntless filled the street. We had emerged in the Dauntless half, less than a hundred feet from the chaos where the two groups intersected, a writhing, screaming mass.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” Ace murmured, fumbling around the controls of the truck and looking around wildly. We couldn’t go back, and we couldn’t exactly use the roads. 

A loud pounding on the truck made us all jump. “Hey!” yelled a muffled voice. A fully conscious Dauntless ran around to the front of the truck, waving his hands. “Why are you out of formation? Get out of the vehicle and put your hands over your head!”

“ _Shit,”_ Ace growled.

“Ace, no!” I yelled at the same time. Though the timing didn’t matter. Ace stomped on the gas anyway.

Like driving a sled into a snowdrift, Ace bowled the Dauntless over and heaved at the steering wheel. The truck screeched around the corner, half on the sidewalk, half in the street, plowing through a whole column of hypnotized Dauntless. Whoever was controlling them was fast, though, and soon they began to move out of our way, raising their guns. A wave of gunfire rained upon the truck. The bulletproof windows cracked, fissured, and wobbled. I screamed. 

With eyes like a madman’s, Ace laughed.

We broke through the last platoon of Dauntless at fifty miles an hour, my side of the truck scraping against a lamppost that Ace barely managed to avoid. Then we were in the clear. Irene was gripping my arm and her silver cane, her face green. When Ace changed gears and stomped again on the accelerator, Irene and I were both jolted against the seats. 

“Hell YEAH!” Ace hollered. 

“Please don’t do that again,” Irene whispered.

Ace threw her head back and cackled. “I have ALWAYS wanted to do that!”

“Every girl’s dream to drive a truck through a small army,” I murmured, glancing behind us. A few of the Dauntless turned to chase after our cloud of dust, but soon they were gone.

“I think we’re in the clear,” I said. “Where are we—”

I did a double take. One of the other military vehicles had turned around and was now rapidly approaching. A hatch from its top opened up and a giant gun slid out. As usual, I had spoken too soon.

A thunderclap, a whistling, and suddenly our world was upside down. The truck flipped. Weightlessness.

I caught, from the front window, a flash of yellow sunset. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY im serious this time THIS is the end. thank you guys so much for reading this fic all the way to the end aaaaaaaaand im kidding again this isn't the end
> 
> there's like 4 chapters left
> 
> i also just placed my order for the printed and bound version of this fic that i will put on my shelf with the canon books. maybe i will let you guys know how you can get your hands on one because some people have asked. if that's something you'd be interested in, keep an eye out!


	43. Chapter 42

The front airbags went off. My chest slammed into one of them, my shoulder into another, shoving me back against the seat. My head jerked, and all I could see was black, stars spinning, and silence. I wasn’t sure how you could see silence. 

When my vision cleared, I saw only the airbags, the shattered front window, and a wall. We’d crashed into a building, crumpling the entire front of the vehicle. Smoke was everywhere. I smelled blood, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Irene was bent over, her shoulders heaving. I looked across her and saw Ace, her eyes wide, cheeks scratched from shattered glass but otherwise fine. She was breathing heavily.

“That could’ve gone worse,” she said.

“Easy…for you to say.”

Irene sat up slowly, holding her cane. And that was when I realized that the smell of blood was her—the angular knob of the cane had pierced her shoulder, peeking through the other side.

“Oh god,” I sobbed. “Irene—no no no no no—Ace, we have to pull it out—”

Irene grimaced. “Do _not_ pull it. Lose…more blood… shit.”

Then she passed out, slumping against me. 

The truck shook. Someone was pounding on the outside again, yelling, and through the smoke and haze I could see about six Dauntless approaching with their guns raised. “This is the last thing we need,” Ace muttered, reaching down for her gun. I knew I should have gotten mine too, but I was terrified. My hands fluttered around Irene’s cane, dripping with her blood.

This was how it ended. Helpless, panicking, and watching my only family in Candor bleed out in my lap.

Ace locked eyes with me.

“Do you remember the song you sang for me?”

“When?”

“When I couldn’t fall asleep, the night you took me through my fear landscape.” Ace looked down. At my lips, at my pin, at my hands. “It was an old Abnegation hymn. You said your mother used to sing it.”

I smiled sadly. I remembered. “I never knew you could sing harmony.”

“I didn’t do it right. I’d never heard the song.”

“It was still beautiful.”

 “You’ll sing it for me again. Someday, somewhere, I’ll find you, and you’ll sing for me, and I’ll learn the words. I promise.”

“Promise.”

“I will.”

Her breath hitched.

“Phoebe, I—”

A scream cut her off. A hail of gunfire. We ducked, covering our heads. More screams.

Silence.

We looked out the windows. All six Dauntless were on the ground. Their truck was still and unmoving.

And my mother ran up to my window. 

“Mom!” I cried. 

Her grey apron was spattered with blood, her hair was free of its bun, and she held a semi-automatic rifle, but it was her. I wanted to jump out to get to her faster, even though Irene was still leaning on me, unconscious. I opened the door and reached for my mother.

“Sunshine,” she gasped. She hugged me fast and tight, then reached across to feel Irene’s pulse. “Oh, Irene…you’ve really done it now. Hurry, hold the cane steady while I lift her.”

Ace and I scrambled out of the truck to give Mom room to pick her up. I reached awkwardly over her shoulder to balance the cane without jerking it out of Irene’s wound. With strength I didn’t know she had, Mom lifted her twin sister and gave her to Ace, taking off her grey jacket to pad around the wound. She wore a sleeveless shirt. The corner of a tattoo peeked out from under her arm when she reached up, adjusting Irene to keep the wound above her heart and leaning the cane against Ace’s neck. It didn’t look very stable. But the distant sound of shouting told us that we didn’t have time to waste.

“You know where to take her?” asked Mom.

Ace hesitated. “It’s—it’s been a long time, I don’t know if—”

 _“Do you know where it is?”_ Mom demanded. 

“Yes,” said Ace hesitantly.

I looked wildly between the two. “Mom? Ace?” I had never been so confused. Did they know each other?

“Once she’s stable, stay with them,” said Mom to Ace.

“No. You’ll need me—”

“To hide. I know you want to fight, but you’re Abigail Eaton. If they get you, they have even more leverage over your father.”

Ace looked at me. “I’ll be okay,” I told her. “Go.”

She didn’t look happy. But she nodded and took off down the street with Irene, disappearing into an alley.

Before I could ask what just happened, my mother grabbed my hand and pulled me in the other direction, towards a small office building. The lights were off and the doors locked, closed for the Full Unveiling and the subsequent lockdown. Someone had thrown a rock through the window. With the butt of her gun, Mom struck the glass next to the hole, shattering the rest of it. We clambered inside and ran to the back.

“Mom, where are we going?” I asked. Outside, I heard the _screech_ of tires and stomping, even-file feet. The Dauntless found the crash. Mom grabbed a chair, pulled me into a stairwell, and shoved the chair under the door. 

“Underground,” she said. “Follow me, and quietly.”

She led me down one flight to a basement door, unlocked. The basement was empty except for old filing cabinets, a poor hiding place, but Mom wasn’t interested in anything there. She pulled a tarp down to reveal a door, and through the stained window, all I could see was overgrown moss and ivy.

Our guns at the ready, we opened the door. The hinges creaked from rust. We emerged into the canal, where we stood on a narrow, crumbling walkway built into the canal walls. Above our heads, Dauntless boots marched. I gripped my gun. Then they subsided. My mother looked at me, touched her finger to her lips, and pointed to another canal door three hundred feet away.

It was a treacherous, terrifying journey to the door. Once, I put my weight on a cinderblock, only for it to crumble and slip down the side of the canal. Mom caught me just in time, but the few seconds afterwards as we waited for gunshots or officers’ voices were the longest in my life. But nothing happened. We made it, I picked the lock while Mom kept watch, and we descended into darkness.

A click. Old blue lights turned on down a narrow corridor. Mom locked the door behind us and sighed.

“There,” she said. “Erudite doesn’t know about these passages. We should be safe, as long as we avoid the rats.”

I was quiet. Somewhere, I swore I could hear them, skittering around and squealing. Maybe on the floors. Maybe in the pipes above our heads. Fearlessly, my mother set off. 

“What is this place?” I asked.

“A network that the factionless use. Old service tunnels, subway lines, and empty sewers.”

“How do you know about it?”

“I heard about your wall of conspiracy theories; what do you think?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.

She smiled. We turned down a darker corridor, which seemed to have been hand-dug from the earth. It led into a cavernous black room with train tracks along one side. This must have been a subway.

“I’ve been working with the factionless since I was your age,” said Mom. “They’re very careful with which Abnegation to trust, but when they do, you become like family. I owe them my life. Now, it’s time for me to repay the debt.”

“Repay the debt? Did—” 

The pieces fell into place. Where we were going. Where she had told Ace to go. Why she wasn’t with the other Abnegation, sharing a meal at the Hub. 

“Did you help plan all of this? The marches? Is that why you told Irene to help me with the testimony?”

She shook her head. “No. But I’ve known. As soon as I heard you on the radio...I knew it would begin, and I knew I had to find you.”

My throat tightened. “But I betrayed you.”

“Beatrice.”

“I betrayed our home. I was _selfish._ Doesn’t that matter?”

We reached the end of the subway corridor, where it intersected with a dry, rust-smelling tunnel. My mother stopped and turned to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. 

“You told the truth, even if it meant losing everything,” she said. “Your privilege, your family, your freedom, even your life. That’s not selfish. That’s courage.”

“I ruined everything,” I said. “What are we going to do?”

She touched my cheek. She tucked a curl of hair behind my ear. Her hand floated down to the silver pin and chain on my chest. I covered her hand and breathed a choked sob, a breath of something that defied description. And I looked at her deep brown eyes, the ones I had seen as I gave my testimony, the ones that flashed with every color. Love. Courage. Brilliance. Sacrifice. Justice. In response, she smiled mischievously. 

“We’re going to do what Divergents do best—make things worse.”

* * *

By the time we reached the common district, the sun was going down.

The passageways cut through a few cellars and tornado shelters, and it was in one of these that Mom and I stopped to survey the scene. Our view was no larger than a mail slot, a basement window with dark glass that was level with the sidewalk. Around the city, lockdown sirens howled, signaling to all law-abiding faction civilians to stay inside and pull down their blinds. 

Of course. They wouldn’t want them to see the mass execution that was soon to come.

Flood lights surrounded the perimeter, drowning the plaza in harsh white light. The thousands of factionless. Every protestor had been forced to their knees, packed shoulder to shoulder with all those around them, even the injured ones. Hundreds of Dauntless circled them, guns at the ready. Occasionally, more Dauntless would shove a new protestor into the mass. Sometimes a Dauntless would enter the mass to drag someone out, but those lucky ones were already dead.

Sajida was there, next to her mother. On the other side was a skinny figure in a tattered white robe—Ravi. A small cluster of black and white, separate from the factionless, was being watched by a special team of Dauntless. All Candor. Brighton and Amalka. Judge Bandele and Judge Williams. Not all of the Divergent Candor who stood, but too many. My fists clenched when I remembered something that Jeanine had said—a judge had given the Erudite and Dauntless a list of Divergent. It had to be Morris. Betraying his fellow Candor seemed like something he would take pleasure in. Near our window, a Dauntless struggled to cuff a woman soaked in blood. Miriam. There was too much blood to all be hers, and the way she fought the Dauntless suggested that perhaps none of it was.

I was biting my thumbnail. When I looked over at my mother, so was she.

“Once they track down the last few witnesses, it’ll begin,” said Mom. “We don’t have much time.”

I nodded wordlessly. She put her hand on my shoulder. Then she reached for a sheet of wood against the wall, revealing a crawlspace in the brick.

It, like the rest of our journey, was a long, dusty, and arduous crawl. Finally my mother stopped at what looked like a vent and knocked in a pattern. Twice. Three times. Six times. 

The vent creaked, and my mother crawled out into dim light. I tumbled out after her. Then I was looking up at a face I had not expected to see again—dark curls, amber eyes, blue jacket. Caleb.

“Beatrice,” he gasped. As if _he_ was the one who should have been surprised. 

I shot to my feet, pulling my gun from my waistband. “Judas Iscariot.”

“ _Phoebe,”_ my mother scolded. I turned to her, then saw that she stood before the rest of Abnegation. 

We were in the basement of the Hub. I was too familiar with this place. As a child, whenever there was a faction meeting that required silence and an attention span, I was made to run circles around the empty floors to “burn off excess energy”. Now the floors were packed with thousands of people, just like the ground of the common plaza. Families and children in grey. Every face that I could ever remember and a handful of new ones, transfers and two newborn babies. A couple spots of blue—Abnegation transfers to Erudite, like my brother.

I whirled back to him. “What’s _he_ doing here?” I demanded. “What are any of you doing here?”

Half of the basement hushed me. The other half gave a look that I knew well—the _oh, those Candor_ look. I frowned. It hurt being on the business end. 

Mom placed her hand on my shoulder. “Keep it down,” she said gently. “There are Dauntless at the door.” She pointed to the stairwell. Right.

I gave Caleb one last withering stare before putting my gun away, swallowing my pride, and accepting a seat that someone offered me. A small group, mostly my mother’s coworkers from the charity organizations, had begun to gather around us. Someone handed me a package of crackers and an apple. I hadn’t eaten since before the Unveiling and scarfed it down immediately.

“This,” sighed Mom, “is the other factor I told you about. Erudite moved quickly—they arrived here with the Dauntless just minutes after you finished your speech. We’ve been locked down here ever since.”

“Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“With the other council members,” said a man named Jude, one of Mom’s coworkers. “They’re the only Abnegation who weren’t put here. In exchange, Erudite gave us some of their members as… ‘insurance’.” Like all Abnegation, Jude spoke with measured restraint, though the inflection to the last word betrayed his disgust.

“Only the Abnegation transfers,” muttered Caleb.

I knew that poking him wouldn’t do anything constructive. But I wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy. 

“I thought Erudite would honor your _loyalty_ with better treatment.”

“You’re one to talk, loudmouth,” snapped another Erudite from nearby. Her name was Rachel, maybe; she was a couple years older than me. I looked at Rachel in confusion before grimacing.

“Sorry,” I said. “This isn’t about transferring factions. This is about Caleb getting me arrested.”

Rachel’s scowl dropped. “Oh. That’s alright, then. Jeez, Caleb.”

Caleb threw his hands into the air. I ignored him and turned back to Mom and the others. 

“So, presumably, they took the council members to legalize the so-called ‘riot control’ in the plaza and locked the rest of you here as hostages. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Unfortunately, that’s right.” Mom sat on a crate and checked her gun, pushing the bullet chamber open. Then she reached into her apron and pulled out a new cartridge. I recognized her expression as the one she wore when she threaded a needle. “I already tried to get them to escape through the passages, but about half of them don’t think they’re hostages, and the other half are too frightened to argue. Most of them believe what they’ve been told—that this is lockdown protocol and that the Erudite and Dauntless are doing the right thing by defending the city from protestors.”

“Rioters,” said Caleb.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I sneered.

“Beatrice Phoebe and Caleb Theophilus, you _WILL_ stop,” Mom snapped. “Apart. Now.”

Our response was immediate. I had managed to outgrow some of my old Abnegation habits, and I knew Caleb had been working to change some of his as well, but we couldn’t resist this one. “Yes, Mother,” we said in unison, moving to stand on either side of Mom. Me on her left, him on her right. 

My cheeks were hot as the rest of the Abnegation watched the humiliating scene. But I didn’t have the time to pity myself. My mother cleared her throat.

“The point is, we have to tread lightly,” she said. “If Erudite gets suspicious, people will die. Factionless, Candor, and Abnegation.”

“They already know that Ace, Irene, and I escaped,” I said. 

Mom nodded. “So they’ll be expecting a direct attack.”

“Perhaps not,” said Jude. “From their point of view, it’s unlikely that three women would be foolish enough to attack a Dauntless army.”

“I was _very_ clear about how foolish I am,” I pointed out.

“Then assume that they’re expecting you,” said Caleb. “They’ve set up the systems in the server room—it wouldn’t be hard to cut the power there and shut the whole thing down, but that’s only assuming you reach it. Before that, there’s twenty floors between you and Jeanine, all crawling with Dauntless. How are you going to get through them?”

Mom and I exchanged a look. 

“We’re not trying to reach Jeanine,” I said. “We’re trying to reach Oona.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy finals
> 
> im gonna fail my psychology class


	44. Chapter 43

The news broadcast was taking place on the top floor of the Hub, one hundred and ten floors above ground. It was, as far as I knew, the top of the world.

We didn’t actually know that Oona and Sherlock were there, but that was where all of our newscasts were recorded. Candor, Erudite, and Abnegation typically worked there together, so it would make sense that Jeanine would send two new Candor members up there to send a message of peace, faction unity, and patriotism. It was also high up enough that neither Oona nor Sherlock would be able to see the future bloodshed in the plaza, much less recognize faces in the crowd. What we did know was that the Dauntless were concentrated in the twenty floors above and below the server room, where Erudite was controlling the army. The rest of the building, minus the top floor, was vacant.

So we took the elevators.

Despite the Abnegation’s preference of stairs, there were many elevators in the Hub. Most were closed. One of these was a cargo elevator that ran down to the basement. The Erudite laughed at the idea of a bunch of pious Abnegation hotwiring the elevator back onto the power grid and trying to escape through an empty elevator shaft that went nowhere but up, so it was unguarded. Caleb reported that, in the case that one of us was smart enough to get it working but dumb enough to try it anyway, all of the exit doors for the bottom forty floors were guarded by Dauntless. Which was alright, because we weren’t going there.

Caleb and some of the willing Erudite had done the hotwiring part, then sniffed indignantly and told us that we were going to our deaths. Erudite weren’t ones for thinking positive. Wherever my mother had gotten her gun, there was only one, so she and I went alone. As we stood together in the elevator, silent except for the creaking of ancient pylons and gears, it did feel like dread. Maybe we were going to our deaths.

I hugged my mother, long and tight. 

We didn’t speak. 

We got off on the second to last floor. The place was cold and pitch dark, but clear of Dauntless. We took the last flight of stairs up, careful not to make a sound, and I pressed myself tight against the wall as my mother picked the last lock. She touched my hand. Then we kicked the door in.

Two Dauntless were by the stairwell. Mom shot them without hesitation, a spray of bullets that deafened my ears. 

Another Dauntless charged and I raised my gun, but my hands were shaking too much. I missed. Mom shot him, too, and he slumped lifeless against the wall by the studio door. Mom dug his ID card from his chest pocket. Though it was covered in blood, the door still opened. 

The studio was brightly lit, the windows overlooking the dark city. Only five people were inside—three Erudite, Oona, and Sherlock. Oona was wearing a pretty white dress. One of the Erudite had been fixing her hair. Sherlock sat in a chair in the corner, though when we came in, he stood up.

“Get down!” Mom yelled. “I don’t want to hurt you! Hands in the air, get down to the ground!”

It scared me to see my mom like that. But I raised my gun with her, and I tried to swallow the nausea in my throat when my friends and the Erudite looked at me in terror.

“Phoebe?” said Sherlock. I met his eyes, green and frightened.

There was a young Erudite near him. In a split second, she pulled a gun and fired behind me. 

My mom cried out. Red burst from her hip, and she was only able to fire the gun twice more. The Erudite woman went down. Then, so did my mother. “Mom!” I screamed, but then someone shoved me from behind, and as I crashed to the ground all I saw was white. Lace. Long dark hair. 

Oona stumbled to the wall, reaching for the glass case around the fire alarm. I got up. 

“Oona, stop!”

She turned.

“Or what?” she snapped. “You’ll shoot me, too?”

Mom was at my feet, struggling to rise. “Mom, get out of here,” I said. 

“I’m not leaving you,” she replied.

“Don’t protect her,” said Oona.

“She’s my mother— _”_

“She _killed_ someone.” 

Oona’s head jerked to the open door. A Dauntless’ limp hand lay there. Against the wall, the two other Erudite cowered, shivering, staring at the body of the third Erudite. The blood on the white floor. My mother gasped in pain, struggling to pull herself away from us. I wanted to tell her, _Go._ I wanted her to run.

Time had slowed, leaving only me and Oona.

“She’s killed _thousands,”_ said Oona. Tears streamed down her face. “And you stand there, defending her.”

I held out my empty hand. My gun dropped to my side, though I didn’t let it go. “If you pull that alarm, thousands more will die. Innocent people.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. I know because I saw it. But they’re trying to make you tell the city that it’s not real. We can’t let them get away with this.”

“With enforcing the law?”

“Judge Touma is down there, Brighton and Ravi are down there, they don’t deserve to die—”

“Brighton is there?” said a soft voice.

I turned. Sherlock was standing in the middle of the room, his shoes in a pool of blood. He had gone to the Erudite woman’s side, but now he was frozen, staring at me. He was thinner than I remembered. Even when he was undressed in the Grand Courtroom, I hadn’t noticed how sickly he looked. How little he resembled the shy, brave, cheerful kid who followed me into an attic.

“Sherlock,” I stammered, “Erudite is lying to you. They’re trying to make you lie to the city.”

“Judge Morris asked for this broadcast,” he said blankly.

“He’s lying, too. Those people down there, they aren’t criminals, Erudite wants to kill them all for speaking their minds. That’s not justice.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Oona snapped. “Justice—lying— _hah!_ Like we’d trust _you_ after all you did.”

“All I did?”

“Don’t you dare play dumb. Don’t you fucking dare.”

Oona curled her fist and smashed it into the glass, reaching for the fire alarm. I raised my gun. Both hands. Stance set. I wasn’t shaking anymore.

Behind me, a second gun clicked. I didn’t even have to turn to know. I saw it in the window reflection, a ghost among the city lights, Sherlock pointing the fallen Erudite’s gun at me. He knew how to hold it. I wondered where he’d learned.

“Don’t hurt her,” Sherlock stammered. I didn’t lower the gun, but I did move slowly to the side, putting Sherlock, my mother, and Oona all within my field of vision. 

“I only want to talk,” I said slowly.

Oona curled her fist to her chest, blood running down her wrist. Her other hand rested on the lever.

“You didn’t hear it?” she asked. “You didn’t hear any of it?”

Her Full Unveiling.

No.

I hadn’t.

Her voice was manic. High, wobbling.

“I spoke to _you,”_ she sobbed. “I asked you questions. I’ve been so scared for you. I couldn’t see your face, I couldn’t know if you were listening. All I could do was hope. And then when you got up there, I waited for an answer, but you didn’t give it—you just went on and on about how angry you were, how much you wanted _change,_ you didn’t answer any of it.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear much of anyone’s, I tried, but—”

“But all you could think about was yourself? Like all Divergent, huh?” Her bloody fist clenched, and her whole body winced. “Not once thinking that—that change isn’t always a good thing? That’s what I asked, can you answer? Whatever you think you’re doing, is it for peace?”

“Oona—”

“Yes. The people out there, they’ll die today,” she said. “Maybe our friends. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. They’re calling for a change that will cause the deaths of thousands more.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Peace and justice, gone. Just anarchy.”

“Rebirth,” I said. “You can’t get peace from an execution.”

Oona’s fingers tightened around the lever. I gripped my gun. Across from me, Sherlock raised his higher—the little black eye level with my face. Between them, Mom, breathing heavily. She shook her head slowly. Sherlock rested his finger on the trigger.

Then he turned to Mom and fired three shots.

* * *

She swept the hair trimmings away.

Her eyes caught mine in the mirror, and she smiled. 

There was a sadness somewhere. 

* * *

She was already on the ground when he shot her, struggling on her hands and knees. One shot to her shoulder. Two to the middle of her back. She fell. 

Sherlock turned to me. He hadn’t even lifted the gun again before I shot him. Three times. Like target practice. Right in the X between the eyes. His body hit the ground, and I felt nothing. The alarm was going off and I didn’t hear. I was already at my mother’s side.

“Mom,” I screamed. _“Mom!”_

I bent over her body, unable to move. Only to cry.

When the Dauntless came, I did not fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the harsh ending but
> 
> IT'S HERE! 
> 
> last week I got the printed version of Transcendent in the mail. it is absolutely beautiful. take a look here! https://saltwaffle.tumblr.com/post/189759617340/
> 
> thank you guys for the patience. we are coming up close to the end and i am very excited to share it with you. please let me know what you think!!


	45. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second to last chapter :) enjoy!  
> (also, remember to check out the transcendent tag in my tumblr if you want to check out a printed and bound copy of this fic, wink wink nudge nudge)

I might have passed out. I don’t remember. The feeling had drained from my hands, feet, and some of my face. I was dehydrated from crying, starving from a full day without a meal, and probably losing some circulation from the zip ties fastened much too tight around my wrists. Clearly, they’d learned the lesson with my handcuff stunt. A soldier carried me over his shoulder like before. I didn’t care. I just screamed, and screamed, and screamed. They had tried to put a piece of tape over my mouth, but the combination of tears, snot, and saliva made it too slippery to stick. Once, a woman ordered my guard to throw me to the ground, hoping it would shut me up. It didn’t. She kicked me in the ribs. I retched onto her boots. 

Eventually, they gave up. I was loaded onto an elevator. Down, down, down. I wanted the pylons to snap and kill us all. I knew they were going to kill me, but I wanted it now. Maybe Eric was right, and choosing death was like exploring an unknown, uncertain place.

My mother was dead, and I had killed Sherlock. 

The elevators opened and cool air washed over me. The computer server floor. I had never been here before, but it looked nothing like I had expected. Aisle after aisle of dull grey boxes and metal-grated floors. A low, comforting hum. Strangely familiar. It was the simplicity of Abnegation that I felt, and for the first time in a while, I held back my sobs long enough to breathe. 

The Dauntless carried me down several aisles until we reached a glass-windowed room. Dozens of Erudite technicians sat around the computers, monitoring the dozens of screens. On some, lines of code breezed faster than I could read. It was the simulation, the code already compiled, an elaborate flowchart of commands that would anticipate and address a thousand different outcomes. On other screens, I saw different parts of the city. The deserted halls of the Merciless Mart. The quiet tunnels of Dauntless. The empty streets of Abnegation. The plaza, where thousands of factionless and Divergent waited for a hailstorm of bullets. A wall of everything I had ever seen, everything I had ever known. 

Another room was positioned just above the control room, the two separated by stairs and a mirrored glass window. The Dauntless brought me to a door and dropped me inside. They hadn’t allowed me the privilege of fastening my arms in front of me, instead pinning them painfully behind my back, so I wasn’t even able to break my fall. My shoulder took the fall. Then my front and face. I lay there, trembling and helpless.

“There she is. Your star pupil,” said a woman’s voice. A voice that I was becoming very familiar at identifying without its face. “Peter, be a gentleman and get her a seat.”

Someone grabbed the scruff of my neck and yanked me to my feet, then dropped me again into a metal chair with dizzying force. I gasped.

Then I saw where I was—who I was with—and forgot how to breathe entirely.

Jeanine and Eric were there, along with twenty armed Dauntless. A vaguely familiar teenager stepped back from me and folded his arms. It had to be Peter, one of the Candor transfers from Dauntless who had mourned with Aletheia. His smug smile told me that he was probably one of the tattletales, especially since he didn’t seem to be under the simulation. I had expected to see as much. But I wasn’t alone with them. With my back to the glass wall, I faced an audience, fifty Abnegation adults in their Sunday best, the city council.

In the front row, less than five paces away, were Marcus and my father.

Dad shot to his feet. “Beatrice!”

All as one, the Dauntless raised their guns. They didn’t shoot, but gunfire echoed in my head. I saw the red spreading across Mom’s grey tunic. I let out another sob. “Dad…no…”

Slowly, he sat down and rubbed his palms against his pants. But he only did it to keep his fists from clenching. Marcus touched Dad’s shoulder, then looked at Jeanine.

“Let’s be reasonable,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she replied. “I’ve been more than reasonable, yet all I get is your senseless moral floundering.”

“This is a delicate issue,” said Marcus. “It requires delicate handling.”

Jeanine smiled. “We’re well past that.”

She nodded to Peter, who had moved to a closed door at the other side of the room. Grinning, Peter slammed his fist against a button on the wall. The doors slid open.

Ace stepped out, holding a gun.

“Ace,” I sobbed. “Please, help me—”

“She can’t hear you,” said Eric, leering. “And there’s no Divergent tricks.”

He grabbed her shoulder and punched her in the stomach. She doubled over and gasped. Then she stood straight again. Her face as blank as before, but this time, it wasn’t pretending. 

“Recognize someone, Marcus?” asked Jeanine.

Tension was laced through Marcus’ whole body as he watched Ace move towards me. I couldn’t tell what kind of tension was, only that I hoped it hurt him. This was the man who whipped a child and burned her face with hot oil. If there was any time I understood Jeanine, it was when she smiled at the look on Marcus’ face. 

He finally swallowed. “No.”

“Marcus,” Dad whispered.

Jeanine cocked her head. It was obvious that she wasn’t fooled by Marcus’ transparent lie. 

“Pity.” She clicked her tongue. “Perhaps, then, you can help Andrew understand what it’s like to lose a child.”

My father’s eyes widened. Marcus had to hold him down into his chair, and all around the audience, voices raised in shock. I didn’t know what to feel. Just numb. I could only look at Ace. Jeanine folded her hands and walked towards me and Ace, scanning us both from head to toe.

“I’ll admit,” she laughed, “both of you were challenges in your own rights. You, Beatrice; I’d suspected something from the start, since your aptitude test. To the extent of treason on live television? No. I’d expected you to be too smart for me—not too stupid.”

I grit my teeth. The insult didn’t bother me, but the patronizing tone did. She turned to Ace, eyes lingering on the scar. 

“And Abigail… you’d shown up as a person of interest simply because of your unique background, but everything else checked out. Test results, fear landscapes, everything. I can only assume it was that blind lawyer meddling again.”

Irene. If they had gotten Ace, had they…?

“If we’d found her, too, maybe we could have cracked you faster,” Jeanine continued. “Who’s to say you’ll even survive a dose like this? Not that it’ll matter much.”

Inadvertently, I let out a sigh. At least Irene was safe.

“Get to the point,” said Marcus.

“I’m tired of waiting on you people,” said Jeanine. “I’m tired of your ‘delicate handling’, and I’m tired of you not understanding that we don’t need to be enemies. There was a time when your people and my people got along. We achieved beautiful things together, you know—you’d make the rules, we’d profit from them, the economy soared, everyone would be happy. Well...not everyone. But as long as they believe that the politicians are selfless and billionaires are hard workers, it’s easier to say that need is from within.”

She swept her hand to the side, gesturing to the control room beyond. On the screens, Dauntless soldiers were forcing factionless to their knees. Sajida hugged her mother. I fought back a sob. 

“This is what we need,” Jeanine smiled. “We’ve needed it for such a long time, and now you can see why. These criminals are on your doorstep. They’re calling for your blood. They sit before you, and they call you ‘Dad’.”

My dad stood up again. The Dauntless raised their guns, but Eric held up a fist and they froze. Then Dad went for Jeanine. 

Quick as a whip, Ace stepped in his path, grabbed his hand, and twisted it behind his back. A _snap!_ resounded around the room. The council members startled. I screamed. Dad fell to his knees, and as he wailed, Ace dragged him back to his chair. Then she returned to my side. Jeanine patted her shoulder.

“That’s the beauty in this new serum. Fully compliant, but also fully independent. Limited behavioral control; ergo, limited risk of impairment by Divergence. Simply...altering how she sees certain people.”

My father bent over his mangled wrist, sobbing. An Abnegation woman hurried to help him, pulling off her apron to staunch some of the blood. Marcus gripped the sides of his chair, glaring at Ace. She met his stare, unblinking.

“Although,” Jeanine added, noting the silent exchange, “there was one face we didn’t have to reprogram.”

She stepped away from Ace and I, lifting her chin to the audience.

“Some of you heard what Beatrice said. Listen to the streets. There is injustice all around you, all beneath you. Criminals run rampant in the slums. Corrupted lawyers discolor the names of some of our most generous leaders. Divergents demand change—change that can only end in self destruction. And now, for the first time, they have shown their faces to demand your blood. But apparently, that’s not enough to take action.”

Jeanine looked down at me. Up close, she was older than she looked. Pale makeup covered her face. It was the end of the day. Creases were beginning to form at the corners of her eyes and mouth, revealing cracks of ashen skin. Then she turned back to the council.

“Esteemed Council: this is my final offer. In the plaza below, the Dauntless have three thousand dangerous rioters. I have two of your children. One of them is guilty of calling the rioters to action, and Dauntless demands that she be brought to justice.”

She nodded. Ace raised her gun, pressing the barrel to the side of my head. It was still hot. I wondered why she had last fired it. _God._ Peter ran back to the control room and returned with a grey folder and pen, which he gave to Jeanine. She signed a line at the bottom, then handed it to Marcus. 

“Sign the act, and Erudite will grant due process to Beatrice and Abigail,” said Jeanine. “Keep me waiting, and...well, Miss Abigail can do with that gun whatever the Dauntless want her to do.”

“You’re scum,” Dad spat. “ _Filth.”_

She frowned. “That’s not very nice of you.”

“I’m not signing,” said Marcus. “Sacrificing three thousand lives to save two—how dare you suggest it. How dare you.”

“Your daughter’s life,” said the woman tending to my father’s wounds.

“She’s not my daughter—”

An elderly Abnegation man slammed his hat on the floor, causing the nearby Dauntless to flinch. “Jesus Christ! I’ve had enough, Marcus!” 

“Language!” said three Abnegation at once.

The elderly man didn’t care. He pointed a finger at Marcus. “I’ve suspected for years, and I knew it as soon as I heard it on the radio! That Prior girl may be a hellion and a homosexual, but she told the truth about Abigail!”

“Carrick, you—you take that back—” Dad growled.

“Dad, take it easy,” I murmured. “He’s...not wrong. I think I’m all those things.”

“I won’t turn a blind eye anymore,” said Carrick. “You are a coward, Marcus Eaton, a coward and an egotist, and you’ve been lying to us the whole time to save face. I’m disgusted. Andrew, don’t stand up for him. He wants his daughter and your daughter dead, only to tie up the loose ends that know how much of a liar he is.”

The council began to murmur. I had only witnessed council proceedings a few times, but I knew it was a big deal when they started to murmur. Abnegation discussion was usually orderly and polite, every person voicing their opinion aloud and in turn.

“I will vote to sign,” said Carrick.

My heart dropped into my stomach. _No._

“The rioters are only rioters,” he continued. “These are your daughters.”

Around the room, the voices of council members began to rise. Some agreement. Some doubt. “The rioters are people,” said Naomi, a woman in a grey tichel. I knew her. She taught my mother all the different ways to tie my scarves. “Perhaps they have done terrible things, but is it our place to end their lives?”

“If the peace of the city is at stake,” Carrick replied, “then we must do what is necessary.”

Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “We are not trading lives.”

“Jeanine, you are out of line,” Marcus growled. “Abnegation and Candor will be taking action against you for this.”

“Really now?” Jeanine smirked. “Forgive me, mighty leader; I didn’t think of _that._ ”

The door opened. A nervous-looking Erudite technician, no older than my brother, ran up to Peter. He whispered something in his ear, and Peter turned to Jeanine to pass the quiet message on. She nodded and waved him away.

“We’ve waited too long,” she announced. “The rioters are beginning to struggle, and soon they will overpower the Dauntless and overrun the city. You have three minutes to decide.”

The conference room fell deadly silent. The barrel of the gun still pressed into my skull, growing cool. I wanted to look up at the person who held it.

Around the room, plain fabric rustled as every Abnegation member reached into their breast pocket for a notepad. I knew what would happen next. Concurring opinions would be written on the notes and passed to Marcus. Dissenting opinions would be kept. A two-thirds majority, thirty-four votes, was needed to pass an act like Jeanine’s.

Gradually, the white slips made their way forward. Eight, nine. I counted them as they were placed in Marcus’ lap. Fifteen. Only my father and Marcus did not take out their notepads to write. Twenty. Naomi wrote, but did not pass it up. So did some others. I wasn’t sure whether to hate them or thank them. Thirty-three.

“Well?” said Jeanine. 

“I refuse to sign,” said Marcus.

“The classic neglectful father. How predictable.” She turned to my father. “Andrew, I’m sorry, did Abigail break your writing hand?”

Dad’s eye twitched. “Yes.”

He was stalling. It was his right hand that was broken—he was left-handed, like me. He had taught me how to write. I tried to meet his eyes, but he would not do the same.

“Dad,” I said.

“Quiet,” snapped Eric.

“You have one minute,” said Jeanine. “Choose.”

“I can’t,” Dad whispered. “Beatrice.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

Ace cocked the gun. I closed my eyes, and a tear traced down my cheek.

I was going to die. But thousands of others would live. I suppose I had known that from the very beginning, when I decided to tell the truth—the last night in Dauntless, the short moments in Ace’s arms. Perhaps before that, when my mother and I stood on the Institute roof, her hand resting above my heart, or when I fell to my knees in a chapel and prayed for another girl who died at Ace’s hands. The world was changing. It was etched in my skin.

I thought of home. Soon I would return. I saw my mother in the doorway, her hand stretched out to me.

I breathed in.

And I sang.

* * *

_When peace like a river attendeth my way_

_When sorrows like sea billows roll_

_Whatever my lot_

_Thou hast taught me to say_

_It is well_

_It is well with my soul_

* * *

The shot never came.

It had been a minute. The barrel of the gun was now cold. Its pressure against my head lifted, though it didn’t pull away. 

I dared to open my eyes. Out of my peripheral vision, I could still see Ace, a silent black statue. Jeanine was shouting, her voice blurred in the back of my conscious, like she was speaking underwater.

“Why isn’t she firing?” Jeanine demanded. “You, Peter—get Stirling in here, right now—”

“Ace,” I whispered. “You learned the words.”

The gun shifted again, lifting off my head. I looked at Ace and found her rare smile as she switched the gun from her right hand to her left. Her eyes gleamed with life.

“Might wanna duck,” she said. Then she fired at the nearest Dauntless.

* * *

I jerked my body away from Ace and tumbled out of my chair, falling to the ground.

There were shots. Screams. Jeanine’s voice split the air. “Don’t kill her! I need her!” It was about Ace, I knew. Ace had broken from the simulation, and Jeanine needed her to know why it was from a song. But what mattered was that right now, Ace was raining hell. I had never been so happy and scared at the same time before.

I had fallen facing the wall. I couldn’t see. I struggled against the zip ties, tucking my body and trying to pull them under me, but it had looked easier in the self-defense manuals that Ace had made me read. Someone grabbed my wrists and I instinctively struggled—until I saw the fold of a long-sleeved grey shirt and a work-worn old hand. A blade began sawing at the plastic ties. 

“Run,” said Carrick. “Get your father and run.”

The ties broke. I scrambled to turn around, only to see a Dauntless soldier raise a gun at us.

“Look out!” I screamed. But Carrick didn’t turn. In a split second, he grabbed my shoulders and locked his body around mine.

He had been holding a small pocketknife. It was the only kind of weapon Abnegation were allowed to carry, since it was useful; Carrick kept his sharp. Sharp enough to accidentally slice my arm when he grabbed me. When we hit the ground, that was all I could think of. The pain in my shoulder dripped. It was a shallow cut. Barely a scrape. There was blood all over me. The force of the bullets shoved me again to the wall until another gun—there were so many, I could barely tell one from the other—fired. Carrick went still and cold.

I pushed Carrick’s body off of me and whispered a quick prayer for him. The Dauntless was also dead. I looked across the room to the person that saved me, Naomi, holding a Dauntless’ gun. 

She wasn’t alone. Around the room, Abnegation stood. They fought. Some had overpowered the Dauntless and held guns, using furniture for cover. Elders protected younger mothers and fathers or threw themselves at the Dauntless unarmed. Ace grappled with Eric in front of the main door, struggling to reach Jeanine and her shell of Dauntless bodyguards. Other Abnegation lay on the ground. Like Carrick. Like Mom. Few had noticed me, so I crawled behind several overturned chairs and peered out, fearing to see my father’s face among the fallen.

Before I could find him, the air exploded with glass. A stray shot, maybe Dauntless, maybe Abnegation, shattered the wall of windows that separated the conference room from the control room. The Erudite technicians—the few of them that had stayed after the fight began—scattered.

“No! Come back!” Jeanine screamed. “If you leave your desk, you’ll be factionless!”

It wasn’t a very effective threat. Soon, the control room was empty. Swearing, Jeanine jumped down from the shattered window and ran for the nearest computer.

Ace tried to go after her, but Eric tackled her and they both went down. Around the room, Abnegation and Dauntless bodies covered the floor—more grey than black, and more red than anything else. I finally saw my father, alive, ducking behind an overturned table with several other Abnegation. Dauntless closed in around them. Nobody was left to help me. I whirled back around to watch Jeanine, surrounded by four different Dauntless. I would never get to her before they gunned me down. 

A flash of movement caught my eye. Behind the line of hypnotized Dauntless was another figure in black, running to the back door. That cowardly Dauntless, Peter. Then he was gone. Before I could reason myself out of it, I scooped up Carrick’s pocketknife and sprinted after him. 

The Dauntless didn’t see me. I plunged into the darkness through the back door, not knowing what would greet me there. It was a long, dimly lit corridor, ending at what I recognized as the main elevators.

Peter had been running, but as soon as I entered the corridor, he turned. I ducked behind a pillar and held my breath. Then Peter sighed, and when I heard his footsteps again, it was at a walking pace. Then he stopped at the elevators and pressed the down button.

He made it all too easy to sneak up behind him and press the knife between two panels of his armor, the blade against the small of his back.

“Jeanine’s errand boy,” I said.

Peter froze, hand halfway to his gun. “I’m not an errand boy.”

“Don’t care.” Despite the twelve-inch height difference, I put my other hand on his shoulder and turned him around. “I need a favor.”

I asked him if he knew what I needed. He said no. I told him that he should’ve stayed in Candor, since he was an awful liar. I asked him again and he told me that he would take me where I needed to go. We turned down a side hallway and he pulled out a ring of keys to unlock a smaller door to the server room, somewhat clumsily due to the knife’s edge resting on his spine. 

We went in.

It was terrifying how quiet the place had gotten. No gunfire. No screams. Just the distant sound of Jeanine’s voice, speaking calmly over the hum of the computer towers. I wondered if Dad was still alive. I wondered if Ace was still alive. I wanted to get closer, but Peter pointed to the back of the room, away from the voice.

We reached a row of fuse boxes and he unlocked one with trembling hands. 

“This is it?” I asked. 

He nodded and pointed to two large red switches. “Just—just flip both of those, and it’ll, uh, cut the power to the main control room computers. I don’t know how the serum works, but they can’t send signals without the computers.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You sure?”

“You wouldn’t kill me,” said Peter, not sounding very confident. I pressed the knife harder. 

“No, but this is your spinal cord. It lets you walk, right?”

He gasped. “Ow ow ow—yes, I swear it’s those switches.”

“Pray that you’re right. I’ve had a very bad day,” I said, before I flipped the switches.

One by one, row by row, the ceiling lights went out. The silence continued. The droning hum. The beating heart. Little lights glimmered on the grey server boxes, aisles of stars in the darkness of night. 

And above it all came an error buzz and the distant outcry of voices.

I would never know what it sounded like to hear three thousand lives end at once—it could have sounded exactly like two thousand Dauntless coming to their senses, seeing the guns in their hands, and realizing they were about to become murderers. I wouldn’t know. But when I heard the sound, I knew, deep down, what it was. The voices were confused, but not in pain. It was the good ending.

I heard Ace call out my name. Then my father. They were okay. I was okay. Under my knife, Peter’s trembling seemed to grow worse. Slowly, I took it away, but he didn’t run or attack me, just looked blankly at his feet. Lost. Watched by the void and the thousands of lights.

I leaned against the wall and stared into the universe.


	46. Chapter 45

The next few hours passed like a dream. The same fantasy blurring across my eyes, making me toss and turn, hugging myself and finding no comfort.

Ace was the first to find me, sitting on the ground by the fuse boxes with Peter. He had a flask in his pocket, and we passed it back and forth. We didn’t know each other. We were on opposite sides of whatever this was. But, as if we, too, had been trapped in the simulation, we were suddenly directionless.

When Ace arrived, Peter tilted the flask up to chug the rest.

“I’m so fucked,” he muttered. “Jeanine’s gonna kill me.”

“Is that her errand boy?” Ace asked.

He protested again, clearly not liking his new nickname, but I nodded as Ace helped me to my feet. Despite the dark, I could see the glimmer in her eyes. Carrick’s knife was still in my hands. I didn’t have to speak to tell her what I had done.

She pulled me close to her chest, and I sobbed into her shirt.

* * *

After a while, familiar faces joined us. Marcus. My father. Two or three other councilmembers, the only survivors of the bloodbath. They told us they had the hard drive with all of the simulation data on it. Not that it would matter—the Dauntless in the control room had woken up with a few dozen bodies underneath them, five unarmed and injured Abnegation under the barrels of their guns, and Jeanine pressing buttons frantically while cursing aloud that the Dauntless weren’t firing. They would demand an explanation. Whatever fragile alliance had been formed between Dauntless and Erudite was now fissuring, and Erudite wouldn’t dare activate the simulation again without shattering it entirely.

Jeanine and Eric were on the run, shielded by their small entourage of Dauntless. But they would be back. We needed to leave. Where, none of us knew. Down was a good place to start. As we filed onto the elevator, silent and breathless, Ace picked me up. I didn’t have to say how fatigued I was. I leaned my head into her shoulder and tried not to cry again. 

By the time we stepped out into the plaza, it was clear that nobody else knew where to go either. Hundreds of Dauntless, Abnegation, and factionless filled the square, milling around in confusion. I looked around desperately for a face that I knew. In the crowd of Abnegation, I saw Caleb. He grew pale when he saw my father’s mangled hand, which he still clutched against his chest.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked, his voice faint. “Dad? What’s going on?”

“Natalie,” whispered Dad. Nothing more. Maybe he could sense what I hadn’t said yet.

“We stopped the attacks,” answered Marcus. “For now.”

“ _‘We’,”_ Ace repeated darkly.

“Abigail,” said Marcus.

He moved towards Ace, reaching out a hand towards her arm, but she pulled away and drew me tighter towards her. Then she began to walk fast along the edge of the plaza, heading towards a side street.

“Irene is on her way to Amity,” said Ace. “They agreed to give her asylum, maybe they’ll take us too.”

“Asylum from what?” Caleb asked, trailing after us pathetically. “Beatrice?”

I couldn’t say anything. I stared at Peter, who jogged casually up next to Caleb and slapped him on the shoulder. I didn’t know why he was still following along. Surely, Jeanine would find out that it was him that helped me shut down the simulations, and then he’d be in hot water. Caleb, too. They would know that he and some of the other Abnegation-born Erudite helped us turn on the elevator.

“You must be new here,” said Peter. “Look around, smartass, we’re at war.”

Some of the other Abnegation left us, rushing to rejoin their families, and we were unable to get them to flee with us. Ace wasn’t in a mood to stay behind and convince them, much less search for specific people to bring with, so we took off into the night. For a long, quiet time, we waited in a lonely train yard. The lockdown sirens still blared around the city, but they sounded like cries of mourning. Ace and I looked at the crescent moon. I tried to think about peace.

Yet my heart ached; I knew it was only a thought. Caleb and Dad were alive, and it should have brought me some comfort to look a few feet away and see the faces of my family, but next to them were Peter and Marcus. I would not feel at peace until I could reconcile the two—the knowledge that people like my father and my brother called themselves the allies of people like _them,_ cowards and abusers, and here I sat on the edge of the tracks, watching them wrap each other’s wounds in makeshift bandages.

And of the people that I couldn’t see—Miriam, Ravi, Brighton, Amalka, Sajida, Judge Touma, Judge Bandele, _god,_ so many people, were they even still alive? Maybe the hypnotized Dauntless hadn’t executed them in the square, but what of the Dauntless that had always been conscious? Had they tried to fire? I had seen so many factionless bodies in the streets where the arrests took place. Were my friends there? Where would they go?

Where was Oona?

She saw me fire. Three shots between the eyes. I remembered a moment where I just stared at Sherlock’s delicate silver glasses, shattered and smeared with blood on the floor. Ace’s hand clasped with mine, and I saw the twisted wire frame pressed between our palms. She looked down. Maybe she saw a Choosing Ceremony knife.

 _How do you forget it all?_ I wanted to ask. How can you return to your head and kill her again, over and over and over?

I did not think it was early morning already. But soon, the lights in the train yard began to switch on. “Come on,” Ace hissed, and led us through the shadows to a halted train car. She helped me on, then Caleb, Peter, and my father. She did not help Marcus. From the shadows of the car, sitting on empty produce crates, we watched brown-clad factionless workers begin to mill around the train yard. One of them came as close as the open car door and saw us, but Ace gave him a strange, intricate hand gesture and he nodded. Then he left us alone.

Soon the train began with a jolt. As it pulled away from the train yard, I saw the city behind us. It would get smaller and smaller until we saw where the tracks ended, the forests and fields I last saw when I was too young to appreciate them. The kindness of the Amity would comfort us for a while, though we couldn’t stay there forever. The Candor were torn, the Dauntless shattered, the factionless angry, and the Abnegation leaderless. The Erudite...who knew what would become of them. The peace of the Amity would be a reassurance, not a solution. 

I leaned against Ace’s arm. Like another dose of truth serum, my limbs felt as if they were made of lead, but now, I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t said a word since leaving the Hub.

On the other side of the car, Peter was leaning casually against a crate, hands behind his head. How he could rest at a time like this, I didn’t know. Marcus sat cross-legged on the floor, hands folded and eyes closed. He looked as if he was praying. Peeking from his fingers was the hard drive that contained the simulation data. Of course, the other councilmembers entrusted it to him, the dethroned leader, and he humbly accepted. But the tight, greedy grip said that there was nothing humble about it. 

Caleb was helping Dad secure his arm to his chest in a makeshift sling. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I hadn’t told Dad about Mom. But he knew. I saw it in his eyes. I saw the same thing fill Caleb’s, and he looked at me for a second before crumpling against the wall. 

I jerked my head away. Ace let me squeeze her hand hard enough to turn her fingers white. 

“Your father told me what you did,” she said quietly. 

I didn’t reply. What I had done. There was a lot of that.

“You sacrificed yourself for them.” Slowly, she reached up to stroke my hair. “You saved us.”

But not everyone.

“I didn’t save Mom,” I whispered. “I killed Sherlock.”

Even though I said it, and even though I knew it was true, it didn’t feel real.

Ace was quiet for a while. “I almost killed you,” she said.

I said nothing.

“You let me.”

I turned to face her, and her hand stayed, moving to my cheek. There were tears that I could not remember crying. Her eyes darted between mine.

“I’m feeling a lot of feelings right now, and I don’t know how to handle any of them,” she said in a tiny voice.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Maybe...maybe we shouldn’t. Yet.” I closed my eyes. “Can we forget? Just for now?”

“Yes,” she said, and kissed me.

As the train slid out into unlit, uncertain land, we moved to the open door of the boxcar, feet dangling out the sides. And I leaned against her, and I tried to think of the wind in my hair; the lavender in the sky; the breath in my lungs. The truth of our hands together.

The sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FORGOT TO POST THIS?
> 
> anyway. transcendent is done. holy shit guys, i'm so proud of myself, i haven't finished a longform fic since petri dish.
> 
> thank you all so much for reading, i don't really know what to say. let me know your thoughts! i'm considering rewriting insurgent as well but i don't know what will happen there. if that's something youre interested in, let me know what you'd like to see
> 
> thx for reading and stay fresh cheesebags *peace signs*

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading Transcendent! Please leave a comment if you like what you see, I love to hear your thoughts :D
> 
> Feel free to hmu on my tumblr @saltwaffle or on my twitter @fortissimohno!


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